


Making Waves in Sand

by ignitesthestars



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Jedi Ben Solo, M/M, Slow Build, Slow Burn, the lightsabers are a metaphor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-05-29 23:34:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6398797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignitesthestars/pseuds/ignitesthestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A stone can drop twice into a puddle, but that doesn't mean the water ripples the same.  </p><p>Ben Solo is looking for something. If it can't save him from falling, it might save everyone else when he does.</p><p>Unfortunately for Poe Dameron, the First Order is looking for it as well.</p><p>Unfortunately for FN-2187, he's a part of the First Order.</p><p>Unfortunately for Rey, she's about to get caught up in the middle of it all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Night sweeps over the desert, sucking the heat out of the sand. Poe Dameron tugs his jacket a little closer, glancing out the door at the sky. The stars wink back, bright and clear against the black. Jakku is nothing like home, but there’s a familiarity in actually seeing constellations, even if they’re completely alien. He spares a moment to feel homesick, before turning back to his host.

A sympathetic smile greets him. Lor San Tekka looks like a man who has seen more than his fair share of misery in the world, but he bears it with a certain grace that Poe recognises from his time in the Resistance. Amongst those who have lived through the Empire’s idea of a perfect galaxy, it’s common.

“Poe Dameron. I can only assume this must be something of the highest importance, for the Resistance to have sent its best pilot to me.”

“It is,” Poe assures him, glancing outside again - this time to BB-8, who beeps assurance back at him. No eavesdroppers, then. “A certain...mutual friend of ours has found something in his travels. A reference to an object called a holocron.”

San Tekka’s eyebrows raise. “There are many such objects. I have passed those that I have found on to our travelling friend, over the years. But I fear most have been lost to time, or malice.”

“We have reason to believe this one might be a little more traceable.” He grimaces. “Our own historian was pretty insistent that we’d find it here on Jakku.”

“Ah, yes. Your historian. You’d think he’d have a better grasp on diplomacy, all things considered.” San Tekka sighs, saving Poe from coming up with a way to respond to that. It’s not like he’s _wrong_ , but some things he probably shouldn’t agree with. “Did your historian provide you with any further information about the nature of this holocron, or am I expected to guess?”

His historian had, in fact, provided him with an exhaustive list of details. His historian had been halfway through describing the likely dimensions of the holocron, when Poe had - gently - wondered aloud if it wouldn’t be a better idea for _him_ to go searching for it.

That little question had earned him a flat stare and a tight ‘ _it’s better if I don’t._ ’ Poe hadn’t pushed the matter, which is how Poe had ended up on a desert planet explaining the size, appearance, and last presumed location of the holocron to San Tekka (cube-like, crystalline, on board an Imperial transport to be delivered to an Imperial research facility, both of which were blown at some point surrounding the Battle of Jakku).

“I’ve been to the facility,” San Tekka says, nodding slowly. “My best guess would be that it never made it there.”

“You think the ship it was on went down?”

“More chance of that than it escaping. The Battle of Jakku was a rout - although I don’t need to tell you that, best pilot in the Resistance.”

Poe ducks his head, concealing a grin. He’s not one for bragging, but there’s no point in false modesty, either.

“My advice? Head to Niima Outpost. There’s a community of scavengers there that have been picking over the bones of that battle for thirty odd years now. If they haven’t found something yet, they might know who did - for the right price.”

“Credits?”

“Food, if you can. Other supplies. Some of them may take credits, but it isn’t your best bet. ”

That spoke to the kind of place Niima Outpost was. Part of taking on missions for the Resistance means gritting your teeth and leaving things as you find them, but it’s hard to come face to face with the galaxy’s misery time and time again without trying to _do_ something about it.

He is not, Poe muses, a very good spy. A groan escapes him, but he squares his shoulders. He believes in the Resistance. He even believes in the man who sent him here.

“It is a little like looking for a grain of sand in the desert,” San Tekka admits. “But I wouldn’t encourage you if I thought the task was impossible, and I do not think you would have agreed to come if you thought it was a fool’s errand.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” His smile comes easier than he thought it might. “Mind if I ask what makes you so confident, though?”

The old man smiles back. “Call it a good feeling. Besides, I know Ben Solo. He never would have let you come here in his stead if he was anything less than certain that you’d find it.”

* * *

FN-2187 hates the desert.

He decides this about two seconds after he steps foot in the desert, and the sand manages to work its way under his armour. Which is at least climate controlled, but there’s something about seeing the glare of the sun bouncing off so many white-domed heads that make his brain think he’s _supposed_ to be hot,

The sand - which has to be some form of advanced warfare that the First Order doesn’t know about because it only exists on _Jakku_ , and who the crap would subject themselves to this planet long enough to capture it? - niggles its way under his clothes as well, sticking to his skin. Behind the mask, FN-2187 grits his teeth, and pretends that’s his biggest problem.

Nothing to do with the blaster he’s got in some poor villager’s face.

It wasn’t like this in the sims. Not detailed enough. The sun never threw up light like a soldier pushed past his limits. The enemy combatants never whimpered quite like this, desperate eyes searching his mask like they thought there might be something under it.

The sand. Seriously, no training ever thought to pour sand in his boots.

“Captain Phasma.” The old man’s voice is surprisingly steady, for a guy whose whole settlement is one wrong move away from extinction. “Your brutality is renowned. I can only assume you require something from us, that you haven’t opened fire already.”

“Your pathetic little settlement isn’t worth my firepower.”

“But it is worth your presence.”

 _Man, what are you doing?_ The thought rings in FN-2187’s head before he can stop it. Phasma backhands the guy so casually, you would have thought she was offering to shake hands. He staggers, but doesn’t fall. Red paints his mouth.

FN-2187’s right foot itches. He holds his blaster steady.

“The First Order is seeking to reclaim an artifact. A holocron.”

“I’m - afraid you will have to be more speci--”

“It contains a list of names.”

FN-2187’s right foot itches. He holds his blaster steady.

The old man sighs through the blood. FN-2187 hadn’t realised simply breathing could be so defiant. “Even if I did know where such an object was - which I do not - what makes you think I would hand over a list of Jedi children to the First Order, Captain?”

Phasma doesn’t even turn her head. Why would she? Her orders crackle through every headset for those not close enough to hear her voice directly, and there’s no reason to assume the stormtroopers won’t follow them to a T. No reason at all.

FN-2187’s right foot itches. He holds his blaster steady.

“Kill every tenth villager.”

Lor San Tekka closes his eyes as screams rise up around them with the heat. Like he knew this was coming. Like he knew there was no other way for it to end. “I don’t have the information you’re asking for! Killing these people serves no purpose!”

“It's not for civilians to decide what the purpose of the First Order is.” A blaster fires. A scream shatters the air, but Phasma is unfazed. All in a day's work for the pinnacle of the First Order.

More blasters. FN-2187 is supposed to be redeeming himself after not firing his blaster on a mining village. He moves around with his fellow soldiers, shouting wordlessly.

He still hears it. A woman clutching at her daughter. _Please,_ she sobs. _Please._ A cacophony of sounds threatens to overwhelm him. His fingers tremble, and don't touch the trigger.

“Ah.” The exhale is soft, pleased with itself. FN-2187 is supposed to be focusing, but he finds his head turning towards a figure in black leather. For a guy dressed like a badass, the figure sure has been unobtrusive, almost shrinking in on himself.

He unfolds now, pushing back his hood. The only word for him is...pale. Pale eyes, pale skin, hair that looks like someone held him upside down in bleach for too long. There's a restless energy about him. FN-2187 looks at him, and knows there's something wrong.

“The droid has it,” he says, starting unerringly at San Tekka.

The first note of irritation creeps into Phasma’s voice. “What droid.”

The pale man barely seems to notice her. “The pilot's droid.”

San Tekka stirs, and FN-2187 wants to scream because both Phasma and the pale man clock him.

“No.” The pale man frowns. “That's wrong, isn't it? I’m sorry. He hasn’t found something, he’s looking for it.” The frown is wiped away by a beatific smile. “Poe Dameron. Best pilot in the Resistance. He’s going to Niima Outpost.”

The wrong feeling only increases in the back of FN-2187’s throat. He swallows, fighting the urge to hurl. And for a moment - just a moment - the pale man’s eyes scrape over him.

Another shot drags a collective wail into the world. Lor San Tekka slumps, falls face first to the ground. FN-2187 is glad. He’s seen what point blank blaster fire can do to a man’s head.

“Fall out,” Phasma barks. Then, so quietly that he’s sure he’s not supposed to hear it-- “You’d better not be _confused_ again, Aalto Ren. The Supreme Leader will be displeased.”

“I’m never confused,” the pale man replies, his eyes already skipping over the mixed crowd of villagers and troopers. The villagers are scooting back,. And there’s trauma in their gaze, but anger as well. FN-2187 thinks that they’d better get back on the damn shuttles before one of them gets their hands on a blaster of their own.

A gloved hand swims in front of his mask. Fingers smear down the front of it, and when his vision’s clear again, Aalto Ren is there.

“You didn’t shoot last time, either,” he says.

Something in FN-2187’s gut tells him he’s not talking about the miners.

* * *

Heat oozes through the air, casting everything everything in a hazy shimmer. Rey lifts a hand to shade her eyes, to almost zero effect. A sigh large enough to seem at odds with her frame escapes her, but she grabs her sled and begins the trek up the side of the sand dune anyway.

Something stirs off to her right. Grimly, she ignores it. Jakku has more than her fair share of dangers, but in this case, she can trust her instincts. She keeps climbing.

It takes a good half hour to get to the top, between her staff and the sled and the sand slipping under her feet. Her face itches. The back of her throat feels like it’s sticking to the top of it, but she can’t drink yet. The towering husk of a Star Destroyer looms over her, the only witness to her discomfort. After however many years it’s been, most scavengers have given up on this particular beast.

More for Rey. She pushes off towards one of the many gaping holes, and thinks she hears a sigh. She grits her teeth, glances up at the achingly open sky overhead as if to ask _why me_ , and stops.

“This is only because Unkar paid six portions for what I found last time,” she warns. “I’m not making a habit of this. I can’t afford to go crazy.”

 _They might not want me back_.

She waits, daring the world to respond. It doesn’t - at least not verbally. The memory of the sigh lingers, though, and she’s not sure if the lack of response makes her feel better or worse. Either way, she turns from the Star Destroyer, picking a direction at random. She feels like an _idiot_ , but not as stupid as she felt the first time she did this.

Of course, she’d been desperate then. Now, she’s just…

listening.

She crests another dune, and shock just about punches the air out of her. She’s lost count of how many times she’s visited this particular site, but the wind has never cleared a whole shuttle before. Rey’s on her sled before the more sensible part of her can worry about decades-old traps (or more recent ones laid by other scavengers). Call it a gut feeling, but somehow she knows that she’s the first person here since the days after the Battle of Jakku.

“How--?” She bites her lip on the question, unwilling to descend any further into madness.

Cracking the kriffing shuttle open takes longer than she would have preferred, and the sun starts to dip perilously low in the sky. Rey allows herself a careful ration of water when she finally gets into it, after the stale hiss of air has knock her back. She secures the hatch, makes sure there’s no way she’s going to get trapped, and lowers herself inside.

Everything is sideways. That’s her first thought, before the skeletons register.

“Ugh.” She feels a little - awkward, rummaging around their final resting place, but the third thing she notices is just how _intact_ the thing is. There’s enough in here to keep her going for weeks. Maybe even a few months, if she can keep it hidden and doesn’t devalue the hoard by bringing it to Unkar all at once.

And there are storage boxes. The memory of finding military rations in a similar situation bites at her, and she lunges for them. The first one she comes to is locked, so she detaches it completely for later inspection, and continues picking over her find.

It’s only later, when she’s hauled what she dares back to her own little base and booby-trapped the rest, that she remembers it. Rey doesn’t think she can be blamed - there _had_ been rations, after all. She hauls the storage box over, balancing the thing on her crossed knees as she carefully inspects it. Imperial storage in particular has a tendency to explode at the worst times, so she takes extra caution when she’s slicing the lock.

“Aha!” The footlocker makes a happy _click_ sound, and she grins up at her fighter doll. Something in the corner of her eye tugs at her attention, but she keeps her gaze firmly on the doll. The doll does nothing in particular back, which is a comfort. Dolls aren’t supposed to respond.

She faces the storage box away from her, justin case. One swift motion opens it up, and--

Nothing happens.

On the plus side, Rey’s pretty glad nothing blew up. On the minus side, it’s kind of anticlimactic. She gives a little sigh of her own, rubbing her forehead as she peers over the lid. The changes that it’s more rations are slim - the Empire was hurting for a few things by the time the Battle of Jakku rolled around, but someone had invested in long-life food somewhere along the line. When she did luck into a hoard, no one had bothered to lock it up. But she’s come across some good things before - computer spikes, credits, even a weapon or two.

This one has cubes.

She frowns, leaning in closer. They’re like nothing she’s ever seen before, blue and gold and sort of like they might be see-through. Gingerly, she picks one out of the box.

It feels...right. Which is a stupid thing to thing about a cube. Rey holds it up to her dim lightsource, squinting like that’ll make it make more sense. But the cube remains a cube, with no discernable way of opening it, and no ports to imply that it might attach to something else.

Her stomach rumbles. She sighs, dropping the cube back into the box with its friends, and shoving the whole thing aside. Maybe it’s something that’ll turn out to keep her fed for a year, but it won’t feed her right now.

* * *

It’s a sign of the times that the Resistance base is full of people.

General Leia Organa can still remember launching the enterprise against the rising threat of the First Order. A handful of dusty old bags who still gave a damn - maybe too much of a damn - about wiping out the last remnants of the Empire before they became a whole new one.

Luke hadn’t been there. _I want to look to the future, Leia. Not linger in the past._ Had he always been that much of a hopeless idealist, or had that come after the whole Vader situation had resolved itself?

She snorts, a quiet amusement. Thirty years later, and Vader still haunted her steps. There was a situation that wasn’t going to be _resolved_ any time soon. His legacy touched all parts of her life, in one way or another.

Which was why the Resistance base is full of people, rather than those few dusty bags still playing at being heroes. More and more people realising that you don’t get a future that you don’t fight for.

A sharp flare in the back of her skull stops her in her tracks.The old, familiar fingers of fear grip her mind, and it’s all she can do not to break into a run. But panic doesn’t help. She can at least agree with her brother on that front.

“General Organa--!” A girl, with blonde hair wrapped in a style that reminds her of a younger, more foolish version of herself, clatters around the corner. Leia gives her a sharp nod of something approximating thanks.

“I know. I’ll be there.”

‘There’ is the residential building. ‘There’ is a room that manages to be slightly apart from all the rest. ‘There’ has a door blown right out of the frame’. Leia doesn’t hesitate to step through.

A stooped figure slumps over a desk, hands knotted in his hair, body held still. He doesn’t look up, doesn’t acknowledge her, but she feels a shift in the Force anyway. In what direction, it’s hard to tell.

“You’ve made a mess,” she says, leaning against the ruined frame.

“I’ll fix it.”

“Obviously.” She gathers her worry and her fear up in a little ball, and shoves it to the back of her mind. It has no place here. “Are we gonna talk about this now, or are you going to make me wait?”

Another flare, but this one is milder. Frustration, as he drags his hands from his hair to give her a flat look that’s almost as impressive as her own.

Almost. _Kid’s got a while to go yet_ , says a voice that sounds suspiciously like Han.

“Lor San Tekka is dead,” he bites out. “I led the First Order right to him.”

Finesse has never been his strong point, she thinks ruefully, as the bottom of her stomach drops out. It’s an old feeling, a familiar one. She’s never had a chance to forget death, in this lifetime.

“It’s a loss,” she says, processing. Grief will have to wait until a later that probably won’t come. “And Poe?”

Frustration creeps into his face. There’s a shake to his voice that he’s been suppressing, until now. “In the wind.”

She nods. That could be good news, or bad news. Leia’s pretty sure that until she sees the body, she won’t believe Poe Dameron is dead. The kid’s got too much flash to go down without half the galaxy knowing about it somehow.

Slowly, she reaches out. She can never be sure if it’s a good idea, physical proximity. She can only go with her gut, and her gut tells her to comfort her son.

“This is what it is to be a leader, Ben.” Her voice rasps on his name. “You make the best decisions you can. Sometimes people die. And sometimes, you save more.”

The remnants of the door rattle, rise - and abruptly fall still again. Ben turns away from her, back to his datapad. A beat passes, before one large hand covers the one on his shoulder.

“This is a fool’s errand.” There’s a crack in his own voice, a wealth of emotion he won’t let himself show roiling beneath.

“So call it off.”

He stiffens. A small, sad smile graces Leia’s face. She tugs her hand from under his, pats his fingers once or twice.

“If it’s worth doing, do it right. Don’t waste his sacrifice.”

* * *

Long into the night, Ben Solo stares at his datapad. Files pile on top of each other - history, mechanics, last known location. At some point, he sends a request and payment for a new door. The bits and pieces of the last one compact themselves, crushing together into a ball smaller than his head.

 _Your failure is a symptom of your weakness_. The voice in his head is matter of fact. Like it speaks only the obvious. _You know what you must do to be strong_.

When the sun rises, so does he. The X-wing is ready in a matter of minutes. He suspects his mother has something to do with that.

Artoo beeps at him, curious.

“Set course for Jakku.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI GUYS welcome to my latest attempt at a multi-chapter au! I hope you like what you have seen so far c: 
> 
> The character of Aalto Ren was first seen in nymja's [The Death of Kylo Ren](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5571064/chapters/12842962), which i HIGHLY recommend. He's used here with permission and distressing enthusiasm from his creator.


	2. Chapter 2

Eavesdropping, Rey has learnt over the years, is a skill just as useful as learning how to get a flight simulator working again. ‘No honour amongst scavengers’ had been a bitter lesson to learn, but she remembers it well. She never seeks to _actively_ sabotage someone else’s haul, but it’s good practice to make sure no one plans on doing anything to her.

The guy in the jacket is going to his droid pinched if he's not careful.

It's a sweet little thing, she'll give him that. She scrubs at some of the smaller pieces she'd stripped from the shuttle, eyes on the droid as it curiously inspects the watering hole, ears on its master. A happabore dunks it's whole face into the water and a grin flashes across Rey’s face, lightning quick, as the droid squeals in outrage.

The happabore turns one baleful eye on the sopping droid, which immediately falls silent. It's head swivels back to its master, and Rey can almost see the dejection written on the dome as it decides that the man is clearly too busy to tend to it.

She whistles before she can stop herself, flapping the tail end of her wrap in invitation. The unit makes a low hum of indecision, but she either has a trustworthy face or it really hates being wet, because it rolls over. This is a bad idea, getting involved with other people’s situations is a bad idea, but the thing just looks so sad, she can’t help herself.

“I can arrange passage off Jakku for you,” the man is saying. “I just need some information on a shuttle. It’s kind of like finding a needle in a haystack, I know, but--”

The scavenger snarls something back in another language that doesn’t bear repeating. Rey smiles down at the little droid bumping her knees, carefully wiping the dome first and waiting for the man in the jacket to snap back. There’d be a brawl in five seconds, she was--

“Well that was unnecessary,” the man mutters, running a hand back through his hair. It flops back in exactly the same place as the alien stomps off.

He looks around, a frown creasing his forehead; Rey hurriedly wipes the last of the dirty water off the droid before backing off completely, returning to her parts. The last thing she wants is to be the person accused of trying to steal a droid like his. The part of her mind that is always hungry thinks that she could get fifty portions for it if she was more...enterprising.

There’s no quicker way to make enemies on Jakku than to be _enterprising_. Either you’re stealing from other people, which makes them mad, or you’re getting rich - for Jakku - which makes everyone mad. Fourteen years have taught Rey that the best path to survival is working alone, getting by, and waiting.

 _They’ll come back_. It’s the waiting that’s key. If she didn’t have her family, she wouldn’t have anything at all.

Rey reaches into her bag, pulling out one of the strange cubes she’d picked up from the shuttle. It feels...heavier than the size would seem to imply, and every time she touches it, blue flashes in the corner of her eyes. She tries not to touch it.

But a good cleaning enhances the value of pretty much everything, so she gives it a careful wipe with the same damp end of her wrap that she’d dried the droid with. It whistles curiously at her, asking what she’s doing.

_Don’t talk to strange droids. Even if they are sort of cute. Helping it was enough._

It whistles again, a lilting _please?_ in its tone. She huffs a sigh, and continues her cautious dusting of the cube. “Surviving,” she says shortly. “I don’t know what this thing is. Maybe it’s worth something, maybe it’s nothing. I have to rely on Unkar for that.”

It’s why she’s only bought one of them with her. If they’re worth nothing, why waste her time hauling them around when that’s space other scrap could be taking up? If they’re worth something - well. She doesn’t want Unkar to know how many she has. Or for anyone to take them all from her

A shadow falls over her. “Hey buddy, I thought I’d lost you.”

Her whole body goes stiff - caught up in the cube and the droid, she’d forgotten to pay attention to her surroundings and the man in the jacket had taken her by surprise. The droid chirps a quick and vaguely agonised version of events at the man, culminating in ‘and here’s the nice girl who looked after me and I think she has the thing you’re looking for’.

Rey’s head jerks up, her hands still around the cube, mouth slightly open to defend against what feels very much like an accusation. The man - he has kind eyes, but that doesn’t mean anything on Jakku - blinks down at her, just as taken by surprise. She watches his gaze dip, from her face to her hands and back up to her face.

She lunges for her staff. The man goes for his blaster, but he’s not fast about it - almost like there’s some reluctance to hurt her in his actions. It makes Rey feel a little bad about whacking him around the head, but this is Jakku and she’s had her haul stolen before. He staggers back, hits the ground, and she’s lucky the little droid decides to squeal after him instead of her, because it gives her the time to gather the rest of her salvage and book it.

“Wait - wait! I’m not trying to hurt you!”

She dodges scavengers and Unkar’s people alike, prodding the happabore with her staff as she swings past it. The poor thing roars, but it’s not fast enough to see who poked it. The sounds of chaos erupt behind her as she leaps onto her speeder, the engine sputtering to life under trembling hands, and then she’s gone.

* * *

Poe thinks he probably would have been fine if it wasn’t for the happabore.

The beast rears - as much as something with that much weight can rear - and he only just avoids being crushed. BB-8’s shriek of indignation sounds over the sudden eruption of yelling as the happabore backs into someone’s stall, and that person takes exception to the happabore owner’s face.

He does his best to keep his eyes on the girl - and damn, does she have a good swing on her, his vision’s having trouble focussing. But someone grabs him by the jacket and throws him into a table of salvage as the market descends into an out and out brawl, and all he sees is a flash of beige swinging onto a speeder and the vague direction it heads in.

It’s around then that the First Order rolls in.

Poe’s mind works overtime. His X-wing’s in the yard with the rest of the flight worthy ships, but that’s on the other side of the brawl. Along with the girl, who he’s pretty sure has the exact thing he’s looking for. Or, if it’s not the exact thing, it’s a damn sight closer to it than anything the other scavengers in this place have been able to offer.

That means she’s in danger. Word had already filtered in that morning about an attack on a settlement, and as much as Poe wants to think it wasn’t the place he just came from, he knows better than to hope when it comes to the depravities of the First Order. He tries to fight his way through the brawl as Stormtrooper fire spews into it, but the smoke and flashing blaster bolts make it impossible to tell what direction he’s going in, much less if he’s actually managing to move in it.

A frisson of fear works through him. There’s nothing specific about him that says he’s Resistance - except for his face. Except for the droid full of Resistance secrets desperately trying to lead him through the roiling crowd.

He ducks, moving off to the side, away from the troopers as they spill out of their shuttles. If BB-8 had shoulders, he would have taken the droid by them; as it is, he places a hand on the little thing’s dome, comforting as he can.

“Hey buddy. Listen to me. You remember the girl from before?”

A whistle.

“Yeah, the one that hit me. Forget about for now, okay? You need to follow her if you can. Don’t lead the First Order to her, but keep on her trail. Tell her about the holocron, that she’s in danger. Get her off Jakku if you can, but make sure you put her in touch with the General. You got it?”

Another whistle, and a series of increasingly frantic beeps. Poe flashes his best grin, and pats BB-8 on the head. “I’ll be fine. And so will you. Don’t worry, BB-8, I’ll come back for you. Wait until it’s safe, and then head in that direction.” He points. “I believe in you, buddy.’

* * *

The nice thing about a brawl, FN-2187 decides, is that it’s real easy to fire your blaster into a few crates and claim to be doing your job.

He’s been lucky so far; if they’ve checked his blaster, there hasn’t been time for reprimands or any serious repercussions. Hopefully the damage he’s just caused will be enough to skate him by until--

_Until what?_

He’s a Stormtrooper. A soldier for the glory of the First Order. His job is to kill their enemies without hesitation, lest their enemies kill them first. He can’t keep going into battle and _not battling_.

Something catches his attention from the corner of his eye, a flash of orange and white that manages to stand out against the rest of the orange of Jakku. A little droid, trundling away from the brawl, its dome twisting back every couple of seconds to look.

Aalto Ren’s soft, creepy voice spiders its way into FN-2187’s head. _The droid has it_. FN-2187 isn’t even sure what they’re supposed to be _looking_ for - the Stormtroopers are just the muscle on this little excursion of Phasma’s - but he’s abruptly convinced that the droid is the key to this whole mess.

It’s definitely the key to getting FN-2187 away from having to use his blaster on anything that begs him not to. The brawl dies down, broken bits of stalls and salvage strewn everywhere, the groans of the injured and worse settling slowly with the dust. Phasma gleams so harsh under the Jakku sun, FN-2187 half expects a bunch of little fires to start spontaneously around her.

“Aalto Ren--” she starts, but the pale man - and seriously, how the kriff does he keep popping in and out of the trooper’s range of vision like that?- is already toeing at a man with a blaster to his head, one black boot nudging his chin up.

“Here,” Aalto Ren says, and there’s a strange twist to his mouth that FN-2187 isn’t sure you could call a smile on anyone else. On this man, though, it might be as close an approximation as he gets.

The weird part is, he’s not looking at the guy in the jacket whose face he’s rubbing his foot on. He’s looking right at FN-2187.

Phasma somehow manages to convey irritation and disdain, despite the fact that she’s wearing a mask like the rest of them. She doesn’t say anything to Ren, just turns that mask on him until he wilts under the glare of her armour and skulks off to the background. Which is weird in and of itself, because he’s pretty sure that the Knights of Ren are supposed to be a force of their own. Seeing one cower in front of the captain is just one other weird thing to add to what has honestly been a weird few days.

“Poe Dameron,” she intones. “Your reputation precedes you. You probably should have considered that before you went undercover.”

“Phasma.” Despite the blasters leveled at him, Dameron raises one hand to shield his eyes. “Your reflection precedes you. Tell me, are you that bright so your Stormtroopers can find you when they get lost? I know their ability to sight a target is a little--”

The sound that escapes him when Phasma’s boot connects with his gut is something between a grunt and a sharp expulsion of air. Already kneeling, Dameron doubles over himself, slumping to one side. Despite that, there’s something in FN-2187 that can’t help but admire the guy’s style. He’s pretty sure he wouldn’t mouth off to the captain in a million years, even if he knew there wasn’t a chance he was going to live out the week like Dameron had to.

“Can’t talk...if I can’t breathe…” Dameron wheezes, working to straighten himself again. He’s got a black eye, FN-2187 notes, a real sunrise blooming right under his left eye. He’s going to see worse.

“Where’s your droid, Dameron?”

“What droid?”

“He's a BB unit with a selenium drive and a thermal hyperscan vindicator,” Aalto Ren offers, suddenly _there_ again and sounding like he’s quoting something. FN-2187 does his best not to jump. “Also. Orange and white. In case you forgot.” His lips peel back in that not-smile, and FN-2187 decides that now’s as good a time as any to bring up the fact that he’s _seen_ the droid in question.

Anything to get away from this guy. His stomach’s churning again, and it’s not completely due to the fact that he’s about to interrupt his superior.

“Uh - Captain Phasma?”

There is nothing more terrifying in the galaxy than watching Captain Phasma’s chrome helmet slowly turn to stare at you. Except maybe hearing her carefully enunciate your serial number right after.

“FN-2187,” she says flatly. “What. Is. it.”

“Just that - the droid? The BB unit? I saw--”

“No!” Dameron lurches and another trooper puts him down with a stun before he can stagger to his feet.

FN-2187 stares at him for a second, his slumped and unconscious form. Tries to remember if he’s ever seen a man leap to the defense of a droid before.

Must be something important stored with it.

“Soldier,” Phasma prompts. “I don’t have all day, and neither do you.”

“Right.” FN-2187 straightens his shoulders, ignores the echoing _no_ in his head, the fainter _please, please_ of a woman clutching her daughter. “I saw it heading off. Dameron must have given it instructions.” He relays the direction as best as he remembers, and hopes for a reprieve.

Hope doesn’t have a lot of place in the First Order, but here he is anyway. Phasma observes him for a moment, her thoughts impossible to discern in the resulting silence.

“Take a squad,” she says finally. “You have until nightfall. Don’t make me regret my faith in you, FN-2187.”

Well. He’d been wrong about what the most terrifying thing in the galaxy is, then. Because he’s on a desert planet, but damn if he doesn’t feel ice cold right now.

A hand forces the jump that he’s been trying to suppress out of him. Leather clad, attached to the arm of Aalto Ren, who needs a freaking bell on him or something. Phasma has already turned her attention back to Dameron and reprimanding the trooper that stunned him, so she misses the way the Knight of Ren leans into him.

“If you shoot her this time,” the pale man whispers, “I’ll be unhappy.”

FN-2187 could really do with a little less up and close time with Aalto Ren.

* * *

The sun’s on the other side of the planet by the time Ben sets down at Poe Dameron’s last known location. Sand kicks up around his boots as he drops out of the X-wing, and for a moment he

stops.

Remembers a small blonde boy squinting up at a sky with two suns, wishing he could be anywhere else. It’s not his memory. He’s never sure who it really belongs to.

He feels the blaster fire before he sees it, a ripple in the solemn stillness that has settled over the Force here. He throws his hand out before he can think about it, freezing the bolt in midair.

“Sith scum!” a villager shouts tremulously, and Ben swallows down a bite of irritation. People who think they’re under attack don’t typically want a lecture on how the Knights of Ren and the Sith are two vastly different groups that share the Dark Side in common and not much else.

“I’m not a Sith,” he says shortly, pitching his voice just loud enough to be heard across the night. “I’m not with the First Order, either.” He reaches for his belt, unhooks his lightsaber, thumbs it on with a _snap-hiss_. The steady glow throws violet light across his face, which probably isn’t helping his intimidation factor anyway. “I’m a Jedi.”

“Who cares?” Another villager shouts back. “What’ve the Jedi or their poxy Resistance ever done for us? ‘Cept get a bunch of us killed!”

The irritation swarms up his throat again. The Force ripples again, but he’s the disturbance now, a pebble thrown that should have stayed on the beach. He stares past the silhouettes of the villagers and the settlement behind them, focussing on the stars dotting the inky sky beyond it all. His uncle’s voice lingers in his mind.

_There are always stars, Ben._

Another voice slithers after it, louder, more **present**.

_And there is always the darkness._

“Just - tell me where Poe Dameron went,” he grinds out, fed up with it all. He switches the lightsaber off. “And then I’ll go, and you can get back to whatever it was you were doing before a Jedi turned up to ruin your night.”

“ _Mourning_ ,” the first villager spits. Ben feels vaguely embarrassed about that. “And he went to Niima Outpost, but good luck finding him there. The First Order hit them as well early this morning.”

“Of course they did,” he mutters, and turns sharply on his heel. He doesn’t bother saying goodbye. Something’s giving him the feeling they don’t give a damn.


	3. Chapter 3

FN-2187 needs to kill somebody.

It’s an insidious thought. It creeps into his skull like the Jakku sand wriggling through his armour, and it’s just as hard to shake out. He needs to kill somebody, for the glory of the First Order. For his continued existence, judging by the way the rest of the squad is responding to his orders.

They aren’t _disobeying_ him. They’re too...First Ordery for that. But as he tells his fellow Stormtroopers to spread out in a grid, to move slow while he scouts up ahead, he can feel the shift in the air.

He’s good, right? It’s not ego to admit that, it’s reality. His training scores, his performance, they’ve all been great. There’s a weight of expectation on his shoulder, and the other troopers know it as well. It’d been enough to make him something of a leader before, but this is the First Order, and loyalty is to the cause, not any one individual. They’re picking up on his hesitation. His lack of kill shots is being noticed. There’s blood in the water, and the sharks are starting to circle.

As he trudges through the desert, FN-2187 can’t help but keep glancing over his shoulder. _Accidents_ , he knows, have happened before. So. He needs to kill somebody. Before he ends up being the one killed.

A soft breeze plays in the sand. He’s not sure if he’s grateful for that or not; it’s blowing over the droid’s tracks, making it harder for the rest of the squad to pick up the trail. _He_ has it, and he’s trying not to think too hard about why he’s not calling the other troopers in.

He’s also not sure how he has it, but that’s a question for another day. FN-2187 is putting a lot of things off for a future that is becoming less and less certain.

A series of high pitched punts his thoughts off the morbid course they’re heading on. Heart in his throat, FN-2187 crests a nearby dune as quietly as he can. None of the other troopers seem to have heard, at least not yet. His blaster feels heavy in his hands.

“Well, that’s hardly my fault, is it?” a girl huffs. “How was I supposed to know he was with the Resistance? I’ve had my stuff taken too many times--”

Another blast of beeping. Covered by the dune, FN-2187 carefully aims his blaster. He doesn’t know who this girl is, but civilian casualties aren’t something the First Order takes into consideration most days. They need the droid. That’s his priority.

“Danger?” the girl frowns. It scrunches up her whole face in a way that makes his hold on the blaster shake a little bit. “I haven’t done anything to the First Order, why would I be in danger from them?”

If he had to pick an emotion to describe a bunch of beeps, he would have gone with _exasperated_ for the next set the droid launches at the other girl. One of her hands, the one not clutching a staff, jerks towards the satchel slung over her shoulder.

“That - that’s not fair.” She shakes her head. “I didn’t go asking for trouble. They can have the - what did you call them? Holo-crons? If they want them.”

 _Stang._ She has it. The thing Phasma is looking for, the thing that landed him on this damn planet in the first place. If it didn’t matter if he shot her before, it’s imperative that he does it now. Unbidden, Aalto Ren’s voice rises to his mind - _if you shoot her this time, I’ll be unhappy._ But he’s never seen this girl before in his life. And besides. He doesn’t take orders from some jumped up Knight of Ren.

His hand trembles. The motion shivers down his blaster, and the droid abruptly cuts off at the same time the girl’s head jerks up. For a second, he has the clearest picture in the world of her, even with the distance between them. Her face is an open book, every flicker of emotion surging across it. He can pick out the details of shock and anger and - a little bit of fear. A lot bit of fear, when she notices his blaster.

And then it’s all wiped away, her jaw setting in a stubborn glare. “It’s booby-trapped,” she called. “The whole AT-AT. You might be able to shoot me, but if I fall wrong, the whole place blows. Maybe you’re out of the blast zone, but maybe you’re not.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” FN-2187 blurts.

Even through his mask, the honesty in his voice startles them both. It’s not a bluff; it’s bone deep, tugged out of the same part of him that has stayed his hand ever since Slip had shot the miners for him. They stare at each other for a moment longer. Her eyes are hazel, clear as the sky overhead.

She jerks her chin up. “Prove it.”

 _Prove_ it? “I haven’t shot you yet, have I?”

“Maybe you’re trying to get me to help you through the traps. I’m not an idiot, you know.”

The droid trills something; she spares it a glance to shush it, and it falls into a deeply offended silence.

“Look.” Something else bone deep creeps into his voice; panic. He’s achingly aware of the fact that every word out of his mouth right now is treason, and he knows what the First Order does with traitors.

But the other option is shooting her. And - and as terrifying as the thought might be, it’s not an option.

“I’m not the only trooper out here, all right? I bought a squad. And if you don’t clear out in the next five minutes, they’ll find you, and they _will_ shoot you. You’ve got something the First Order wants, and believe me when I say your little traps won’t stop them.”

He shoves the blaster back over his shoulder, grasps his helmet with both hands. Hers go for her staff, but unless she’s got a rocket launcher hidden in there somewhere, he’s not too concerned.

The helmet hits the sand. The breeze bites with heat as he sucks in air, but it feels good. Clean.

“We’re just--” He nudges the helmet with his foot, “these to them, okay? They’ll throw us at you until the only thing you see is white, not matter how many of us die. You gotta run, and you gotta do it now.”

Her eyes graze the helmet. From the corner of his, he can see another one, near the foot of the AT-AT. Old and cracked, with a familiar symbol etched into his side.

FN-2187 is supposed to shoot on sight when he sees that symbol. But all he feels is the urge to be sick.

“Why are you doing this?” she asks finally. “Why help me?”

He holds his hands out. “Did you want me to shoot you instead?”

“No! I just don’t understand why you aren’t!”

Something crackles from his helmet. He really hopes he turned the mic off. He jabs a finger at the girl. “How about we both get out of this alive, and we meet up on some backwater planet in ten years, and if I’ve figured it out by then I let you know. You’ve got two minutes, lady, before someone else gets close enough to notice you going.”

He picks up the helmet, jams it on his head, and makes to slide down the dune. Behind him, the droid trills, a little uncertainly. The girl’s voice sounds even more dubious. “Are you sure?”

Even FN-2187 can tell the response is affirmative. He almost wants to turn back and ask what the kriff is going on, when something _thunks_ into his armour. He’s about two seconds away from yelling at the girl, when he notices what it was.

A piece of orange and white plating lies in the sand. FN-2187 stares at it for a moment, before the sound of a speeder kicking into gear meets his ears. He stoops, takes note of the direction the sound is travelling on, and carefully alters his course in the opposite direction.

If he’s smart about it, he can send the First Order off on a wild goose chase, _and_ come out looking at least halfway competent.

He’ll figure out what to do about everything else later.

* * *

Rey watches the First Order shuttles take off from the safety of her own shuttle - the one she’d excavated. She doesn’t know _why_ she feels like it’s safe. It’d held the very things the Order is apparently hunting. But her gut and a flash of blue from the corner of her eye had led her here, and--

The truth is, she has nowhere else to go.

Next to her, the little droid - BB-8 - whirs softly. She’s reluctant to get attached to it - she did whack its master in the face and inadvertently cause him to be captured by the First Order, after all - but there’s something about it that makes her heart clutch. It didn’t have to offer its plating to the Stormtrooper. It didn’t even have to come after her to warn her, no matter what it says its master had told it.

Guilt tastes sour in the back of her throat. Its master was called Poe Dameron, BB-8 had informed her. He was the greatest pilot in the Resistance, and had been sent on this mission by a Jedi. BB-8 can’t tell her any more than that, because it’s highly classified information. He _can_ put her in contact with General Organa, which feels a little like being told he can put her in touch with the Force for how believable it is.

She turns the holocron in her hands over for the umpteenth time, digging her nails into the cracks in the sides. Poe Dameron is going to die because of her. She might not have run into them before, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know the way these people do things. The whole galaxy knows about how the First Order does things. There’s the Stormtrooper - but Rey is sure he had been an anomaly. He’ll be lucky to even get back to his base alive and unpunished, after letting her slip through his fingers.

Rey tries the holocron from another angle, stubby fingernails scrabbling at the metal. It warms under her touch, more than the metal would suggest it should. She swallows, trying to ignore the _oddness_ creeping in her chest. Her life has taken a strange enough turn the past few days as it is.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers to the holocron, except she’s really talking to the droid next to her. “I didn’t mean for anything terrible to happen to him.”

 _I was scared_. That’s life on Jakku for a scavenger girl whose only family isn’t there with her. Fear permeates everything she does - will she have enough food, will she keep her salvage safe, will she ever see her family again? There are deeper things, too, uglier ones. Things she doesn’t like to linger on, because they don’t _help_ anything. Apologising to a droid probably doesn’t help anything either, but BB-8 makes a low sound, something between sad and understanding.

It nudges her knee. After a beat or two, it starts purring. The sound startles a laugh out of her, a wet sound coloured with tears. She tips her head back to the ceiling, holding the holocron up over her head. “Thank you, BB-8.” One hand idly rubs the top of its dome. “I know you said it’s classified, but can you at least tell me what’s the point of a box no one can open?”

BB-8 chirps. _Some people can open them_. And the warmth in her hand becomes almost unbearable. Rey drops the thing, startled. It clangs to the ground.

“One day,” a voice sighs, the accent a warmer, male echo of her own, “you’ll start looking at the things right under your nose, and not those out of your reach.”

“I didn’t ask you!” she snaps, and bites her lip on the words too late.

It’s not the first time she’s heard the voice. Usually, she’s better at ignoring it. It’s been a long day. She stoops, hesitating for a moment before picking the holocron off the floor of the shuttle.

It’s still warm. It still pulls at something inside her. BB-8’s dome is turned up towards her, and she can almost see the way its eyes would widen if it were a human child. She can’t be sure without asking, but she’s pretty sure it hadn’t heard the voice. That one was for her and her alone.

She holds the thing out at arm’s length, balanced carefully on the palm of her hand. Not poking it, not prodding it, not trying to tear it open. Just...wanting it to.

The holocron trembles, and it’s not because of her. Rey yelps, but when she drops it this time, it doesn’t hit the ground. It dips a little, sure, and then hovers, slowly revolving as the golden corners pulls themselves away and rearrange themselves until they’re splayed in a wide sphere surrounding the centre of what’s left of the holocron.

It glows. Blue, of course, because why would the weird things in Rey’s life glow any other colour? An image flickers in the middle - a holo. Despite herself and all her good sense, Rey leans in, waiting for it to stabilise.

It doesn’t. The audio is patchy as well, a mechanical voice crackling in and out. It’s...a droid? A very pointy looking droid.

“ _The...Forge is the glory of the... apex of their Infinite...It is a….invincible might...unstoppable conquest_.”

If there was ever any more to the recording, it cuts out then. The holocron carefully reassembles itself, and drops to the floor for the umpteenth time that day. Rey stares at her outstretched arm, abruptly nerveless, before slowly turning to look at BB-8.

“Did you know that was going to happen?”

It whistles an emphatic _no_.

“Right.” Rey swallows. “You said before that you could get me in touch with General Organa. It’s probably time we tried to do that.”

She doesn’t want to get involved. She has a life here, such as it is. She’s waiting for something, and _this isn’t it_.

But she remembers the _thwack_ of her staff into Poe Dameron’s head, the way she’d jabbed the happabore. She remembers reports drifting in of a village decimated just the day before. She remembers stories of worse.

The least she can do is make a call.

* * *

Poe Dameron hurts quite a lot.

He’s hurt before. That’s part and parcel of being a Resistance fighter. You don’t sign up to fight the First Order if you can’t handle a little pain.

He has to admit, though. He’s never hurt _quite this much_ before.

The door hisses open. The footsteps clipping the floor sound like they’re trying to be measured, but there’s a little jump to them. A little too much eagerness. That could either bode really well for him, or terribly. Given how the day’s gone so far, he’s not feeling all that optimistic.

“The thing is,” Aalto Ren says, like they’re in the middle of a conversation. His pale eyes are alight with something like fervour. “I already know that she has the holocrons.”

Poe’s stomach, already not feeling that stellar, drops to his feet. He breathes deep, doing his best not to react. He’s had people in his head before, one of the lucky (for a certain definition of the word) Resistance fighter’s who’d had a chance to train with one of the Jedi. And he’d always been able to _feel_ it, even if he’s as Force sensitive as a rock. It’s an itchy feeling, a knowledge that you’re not alone in your own skull.

He looks this guy right in those too-pale eyes, and feels nothing.

“The thing is,” Aalto Ren says again, “they know I have what you might call ulterior motives. They won’t let me go after her just because I told them I peeled it from your head. They have to hear it from you. And you’re being very...uncooperative.”

Poe has always been afraid of failure.

“See, most of the time _he’s_ here to do this.” The man leans against one of the arm restraints, casual as anything, not taking his eyes off Poe. “He’s not as good at is as me, but he’s got more flash. I guess that makes people pay more attention.”

Or - maybe failure’s the wrong word. Letting people down. So much rests on his shoulders, as a spy, as a leader, as a member of the Resistance. The galaxy’s at stake here.

“Normally that’s--” He cuts himself off with a smile that’s more a baring of teeth than anything else. “Normally that’s _really annoying_. But I guess this time, I have to take a page from his book.”

He’s trapped on his ship. He failed. He let everyone down, and they’re all going to die because of him.

“So, I’m going to leave you here to think a few things over. And I’m going to erase your memory of me being here, and the guards as well - insurance, you know? But you’ll remember what I want. And you’ll remember what to do to make it stop.”

The flare of a red lightsaber flashes in front of his eyes, but it’s not Poe being slice in half. He stares at the two halves of General Organa’s body in front of him, a hoarse scream tearing itself from his throat as Aalto Ren pats him on the cheek.

The doors open and shut, but there’s no one there. No one has been there, except the unrelenting visions of everyone Poe has ever loved being slaughtered before him.

When the pain starts, it’s almost an afterthought.

* * *

Ben and Poe Dameron have grown up together.

He wouldn’t call them friends, because the peculiarities of Ben’s upbringing have made the concept of _friends_ practically impossible. But there’s...a connection. Ben isn’t a fan of anyone dying, really, but if Dameron were to die, it would matter more than most.

So feeling the man’s torture echo through the Force is really starting to get on his nerves.

R2 whistles, an inquiry. Ben doesn’t stir from his stooped position inside the X-wing cockpit, bent nearly in two over his own legs. “I’m fine,” he growls.

That’s part of the problem.

R2 knows better than to push. His next series of beeps is a little more urgent, though, and Ben just about knocks his head on the roof as he translates the Binary.

“Patch her through,” he snaps. He’ll apologise later. “General.”

“Ben.” His mother doesn’t bother to hide the relief in her voice, and he doesn’t bother to pretend he hasn’t noticed it.

“It’s Dameron,” he says quickly, which isn’t much of a comfort. “I’m just...picking up the echoes. He’s not dead yet.”

“Good.” He can picture the way she’d close her eyes. “If anyone can get out of the First Order’s clutches, it’ll be Poe Dameron.”

 _Not this time_ , Ben thinks. He loves his mother enough not to drop that onto her plate as well. “Knowing him, he’ll annoy his way out. That’s not what you called for, though.”

“No.” She snaps into her General voice on the flip of a credit, and Ben has to ignore the old resentment that stirs in his gut. It doesn’t have a place here. “I was hailed by BB-8. He found what you were looking for, but the First Order is still in range of Jakku, and who knows if they’re tracking our frequencies or not.”

Ben grits his teeth and nods. Remembers that Leia can’t see him nodding, and bites back a sound of frustration. “Right, but I’m not going to leave them just lying around until we can get a secure channel--”

“I’m not asking you to,” she says firmly. “I’m asking you to get your fighter ready, because when I give you these co-ordinates, you’re going to need to go fast.”


	4. Chapter 4

In the day time, Ben is sure the remnants of an Imperial fleet are awe inspiring. In the middle of the night when you're trying to beat First Order tie fighters to a prize they may or may not know about yet, they're a kriffing hazard.

He grits his teeth, weaving around and through the skeleton of a Star Destroyer, letting R2 deal with general navigation. His focus is on avoiding obstacles at top speed, his senses stretching as far through the Force as he can manage in every direction..

He breathes. And in the space between drawing air in and letting it go, he feels it.

His hands twitch on the flight controls, and the X-wing lurches too far left. His senses are distracted by the wall of Star Destroyer fast approaching and R2’s loud shrieking through his helmet - whatever he’d brushed up again is gone by the time he’s back on course.

“Don’t,” he growls, before R2 can whistle at him. The droid’s been with him for years now, he knows when he’s about to be sassed. The silence that follows might have an offended edge, but it is silence. Despite that, they work in tandem to get the fighter to the General’s co-ordinates in what has to be record time.

If Ben cared about things like records.

A twitch in the Force lets him know what’s coming. He reacts on instinct, slashing his arm through the air. The plasma grenade sails off across a ghostyard of ships; he doesn’t have time to watch it explode, because another one comes right at him.

“Would you--” He bats that one away too, grits his teeth as a third soars through the air. They’re impossible to see; the only thing between him and certain death is the Force.

_What else is new?_

He’s mostly sure that thought’s his.

“Stop it!” he snaps. “General Organa sent me, I’m here to _save you_.”

Silence. And, thankfully, no more grenades. Then--

“She said you’d hail me _before_ you landed.”

She’d neglected to mention that to Ben. Or...he’d been so caught up in actually _doing_ something for once, he’d neglected to listen. He’s going to shove that aside for the moment, and focus on continuing to not be blown up. The voice belongs to a woman, or maybe a girl. He can see the silhouette of her head and shoulders jutting out of an ancient shuttle.

“The droid knows me, all right? I’m--” _A Jedi_ , he’s about to say, before he remembers how well that went down the last time. The urge smash something slowly starts to claw its way up his throat. “Would you just give me the holocrons? We both need to get out of here before the First Order shows up.”

Even as he says it, a curl of foreboding settles in his gut. A sweep of his senses reveals nothing, but there’s an itch in the back of his skull, a heaviness in the air. Logically, he’d know he’d feel any TIE fighters before they show up, but that doesn’t help the echo of screaming lingering in his ears.

The girl’s head disappears. Ben curses under his breath, striding forward a few steps before the asymmetrical blinking of lights stops him in his tracks.

“What d’you say, BB-8?”

The droid whistles - _it’s okay, I know him!_ \- and the girl carefully eases it onto the roof of the shuttle. Something long - a staff? - comes out after it, and then the girl herself pops through, easily dragging her weight through the hatch. She has a lockbox awkwardly clutched under one arm. He can’t see her face, but he can feel her irritation. And under that--

Fear.

“Look,” he says, starting forward again. “You’re done here. I’ll take the box, and you’ll never have to think about this--”

Ben feels the exact moment that Poe Dameron breaks.

The phantom TIE fighters morph into a very real scream, except it’s not Dameron’s point of view he’s hearing it from. A surge of sick joy surges through him, sweet and dark and enough to make him reach out and--

_Phasma’s suspicion lies thick in the air, but he has been outside the interrogation this whole time (in this time), or at least so far as anyone remembers._

_“The pilot confirmed your...theory.” Obvious distaste touches her words. He doesn’t care (in any time). “The girl has the holocrons. If I find you’ve planted the thought--”_

_His mouth curls up at the corners, the satisfaction of victory. “Would I do something like that?”_

_She makes some kind of sound - disagreement? - but he doesn’t care._ This time _, he thinks._ This time.

_\--he’s not alone._

_“Run fast, Kylo Ren.” Somewhere ahead of him, Phasma’s receding steps pause, confused. “You’re coming.”_

Rages sears the sticky of someone else’s thoughts from his mind - of _those particular_ thoughts. His hand is at his lightsaber before he can think of it, and it’s only the girl’s shout that stops him from tearing it from his belt and destroying the nearest - anything.

“Oi! What are you doing?”

 _ **Yes**_. Deeper thoughts, darker ones rise to the surface of his mind, a slick of oil over water. _**What**_ are _you doing, Kylo Ren?_

“That’s not my name,” he mutters. His hand stays on his lightsaber; he forces his gaze up to the sky, the stars. Somewhere out there is the Ileenium system. The Yavin system. Between them, or further apart, a ship. The tiniest speck in the Force. Insignificant, and yet, still there.

The girl has another grenade in her hand. It’s not primed, but she’s ready. The very edge of his sense ping.

 _You’re coming_. He rips what humour from the words that he can - the man can’t even deliver a threat without getting confused.

“Change of plans,” he snaps at the girl. “You’re coming with me.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Do you want to die?”

There’s something in the way he says it. Ben isn’t blind to the way most people see him. Odd at best, unstable at worst. Neither of those are things that encourage people to listen to him.

But there are moments - rarely, when he needs them - in which he echoes his mother. The girl’s own anger flares in response to his, but there’s a determination there as well. She can’t die. She’s waiting for something.

“No,” she snaps. “But how are we going to fit two people and a droid into your fighter?”

* * *

FN-2187 has probably lost his mind.

It’s the only possible explanation.

“Ren wants to see the prisoner.” He doesn’t specify which one. There’s at least two on board, and they’re creepy as all get out. Especially the woman. He’d thought Aalto Ren had been the worst, but that one - that one’s definitely creepier.

His fellow Stormtroopers apparently agree, because they step aside instantly. Only an idiot - or a crazy person - would dare use the name of the Knights to do something if they hadn’t been expressly ordered to do it. This is, FN-2187 is sure, the very definition of insanity.

On the other hand, it’s not all that smart to stay in a place when you’ve already, technically committed treason, and you can’t seem to fulfill any of your orders. Honestly, he’s got no idea how he’s going to pull this off. But one look at the guy in the torture chair makes him think that at least he’ll have someone willing to help him figure it out.

The guy - Poe Dameron? - doesn’t look too beat up, which is a blessing. FN-2187’s seen people come out of that room looking like mince meat, depending on who’s interrogating them. But there’s a look in his eyes, a sort of hollowness. FN-2187 has to support most of his weight as he hauls him from the interrogation room, and it’s not until they’re a good distance away from it that Dameron seems to remember how to walk properly.

“Turn here,” he barks, shouldering them into a narrow passageway. There’s a little more life to the prisoner, but the second FN-2187 lets go of his arm, he slumps, letting his head roll back and hit the wall. “...Hey. Are you - are you okay?”

It’s a dumb question. One, because the guy was just tortured. Two, because he’s still in his full Stormtrooper gear. The sheer absurdity seems to ping Dameron, though, because he lifts his head and gives FN-2187 a look of scorn that could strip paint.

“They make ‘em bright round here, don’t they?” Dameron mutters, lifting his shackled hands to wipe at a smear of blood trickling from his mouth.

“I wasn’t made,” FN-2187 retorts, and he’s not sure where the force in his voice comes from. As the other guy’s eyebrows raise, he reaches for his helmet, tugging it off. It comes of smoother now than it did when he was faced with the scavenger girl. Like he’s getting used to it. “Look, I get that they messed you up pretty bad, but are you okay to fly?”

“What?”

“Are you okay to fly?” He pauses, figures he should probably explain. “This is a rescue. Can you fly a TIE fighter?”

“I can fly anything.” The words are on automatic; it takes a second for everything to sink in, but when it does, it’s like someone’s gone and lit a fire under Dameron. His shoulders straighten, his body unfolding to his full height, and it occurs to FN-2187 that if he wasn’t in his armour, they’d be about as tall as each other. “But why - why are you doing this?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Aalto Ren says, stepping into the mouth of the corridor.

* * *

“What do you know about this guy?” Poe mutters under his breath to what has to be his unlikeliest ally yet. The Stormtrooper marches him through the halls of the _Finalizer,_ after the pale guy who’d interrupted them. They’d been presented with a proposition - _follow me, or die now_. Poe isn’t convinced that ‘follow me’ doesn’t mean ‘die later’, but in the question of dying, a maybe is always better than a definitely.

“He’s one of the Knights of Ren,” the Stormtrooper replies, voice mechanised now his helmet’s back on. Poe had been pretty out of it when he’d first pulled it off, but he remembers dark skin and darker eyes, brightened by a mix of worry and earnestness. It’s pure stupidity to trust anyone on this ship, but there’s something about this kid that makes him think he can anyway. “I think he can tell the future.”

Poe misses a step. The Stormtrooper adjusts to catch him almost effortlessly. The Knight, swirling dramatically down the hall in his fetish get-up, doesn’t skip a beat. “Aalto Ren?”

“Oh man.” The trooper’s voice pitches a little higher, tense. “You mean he really can tell the future?”

“I don’t--” A couple of First Order goons are staring at them; Poe lowers his voice. “I dunno if that’s it, exactly. But I’ve been briefed on the Jedi who’ve turned to the Dark Side. Aalto was the first.”

“Why?”

 _Because he couldn’t hack it as a Jedi_. But Poe’s got enough self preservation left not to say that in front of (or behind) a guy who can use the Force to do - who knows what? All Poe can remember right now is something about flow-walking and mind talents, and if the first one has to do with telling the future, he doesn’t want to risk what the second one might be.

“You got me,” he whispers back. The corridor opens out into a docking back, the black expanse of space stretching out before them. His fingers itch for flight controls. TIE fighters line the walls, “Hey, what’s your name?”

“Who, me?”

“You’re the one I’m talking to, buddy.”

“Oh.” A beat. “FN-2187.”

“FN--” Poe is very tired. His brain is not working at optimum, and there’s a string of numbers involved in this situation that honestly, he is not prepared to deal with. And he’s pretty sure he was just given a serial number, not a name. “What?”

“That’s the only name they ever gave me.”

“Well, I ain’t using it.” He’s aware that his speech has been a little slurred since he was pulled from the room. Maybe that’s what makes the next part easier. “FN, huh? Mind if I call you Finn?”

It’s the trooper’s turn to miss his step. Poe’s nowhere near steady enough to help catch him, but he gives it a shot anyway. They stagger sideways for a second, before righting themselves.

“Finn? Yeah!” A few more heads turn that way. The trooper - Finn - clears his throat, lowers his voice again. “Yeah. I like that.”

“Every time,” Aalto Ren mutters from up ahead.

That’s...unsettling, but it’s not the most unsettling thing that’s happened to Poe in the last 48 hours. He swallows, shoving thoughts of the room and the chair and everything that had happened to him in there to the back of his mind. It’s not going to help him now - can only hurt him, in fact. He’ll unpack it later. Assuming there is a later.

“Stop.” Aalto’s voice is hoarse. Both Poe and Finn come to a halt, but Poe gets the impression that the Knight isn’t actually talking to them. His whole body has gone still, tense with unhappiness. He’s watching the hangar door; Poe watches as well, and between the endless stars, spots an X-wing.

“It’s caught in the tractor beam,” Finn says. There’s a nervousness to his voice; he’s picked up on the energy from their captor as well. The X-wing drifts closer, inexorably drawn towards the _Finalizer_.

A flash of orange catches Poe’s gaze. At first, he thinks it’s just the colour of the fighter, a splash of paint to assign a squad, or just personalise it. But the fighter drifts closer still, and his eyes adjust, and his brain actually starts to process exactly what he’s looking at. The X-wing is plain white, unadorned except for a curved, upside down triangle.

His droid is strapped to the roof.

Poe Dameron is about as Force sensitive as a rock. No one’s ever come outright and said it like that, but he’s known, and he’s long since made his peace with his inner six year old. So when he looks Finn right in the mask and yells _‘run!’_ , that’s born from years of instinct and the knowledge that there’s only one X-wing in the galaxy that flies with the Crest of Alderaan on it.

“What?” Finn blurts, but they’re both already running as the X-wing opens and all hell breaks loose.

* * *

Speaking to General Leia Organa through a hastily patched thirty year old comms system had been strangely soothing. The woman had spoken in calm, forceful tones - there was nothing gentle in her voice, but the steel in it was more reassuring than scary.

Dealing with General Leia Organa’s representative, on the other hand, is the complete opposite.

“Why are we going towards the Star Destroyer!” Rey cries, elbowing the man in the side. He hisses, and she gets the impression that if he had the use of his elbows right now, he’d jab her right back.

But he doesn’t, because he only has a one-seater X-wing, so when His Mightiness had demanded she get in with him or die, that had necessitated her sitting on top of him.

She’s trying not to think about that too hard. Thankfully, they’re flying towards a First Order Star Destroyer with two TIE fighters shooting at them from behind. As distractions go, that’s pretty kriffing high.

“Did you want to fly this thing?” the man snaps back. His arms are around her to get to the controls, and her whole body gets jerked sideways as he dips and swerves, narrowly missing getting them hit by a TIE fighter missile.

Rey slaps her hands into the roof, bracing herself and probably squishing him a little bit as well. Good. “Yes!”

A growl of frustration. “I know what I’m doing!”

“Is what you’re doing called ‘getting us killed’? Because you’re doing a _great_ job of that.”

“You’re not dead yet, stop complaining.”

 _Yet_. The terror she’s been holding at bay with varying degrees of success abruptly surges through her. They’re being chased by TIE fighters, and the maniac flying this thing is heading straight towards the very thing they should be running from. There are a bunch of magical objects in her bag, and the only reason she’s not grabbing the flight controls right now is because BB-8 is strapped to the roof, and she’s not entirely confident of the makeshift restraints she used to do it.

And. Where would she go? All she knows is Jakku.

He banks sharply. A thunk and a muted squeal on the roof at least reassure her that BB-8 is still there, and Rey can’t help but stare a little open-mouthed as the shots fired from one TIE fighter slam into the other one. _Boom_. One problem gone. The terror abates slightly, even as she thinks she’d really rather there was _something_ she could do other than sit there like a lump.

All of a sudden, everything stops. The man slams his hands against the controls, but nothing happens; they’re abruptly dead in space, with nothing between them and the TIE fighter but the shots it just fired.

Rey curses. “Tractor beam.”

“ _I know_.” He starts flipping switches, but Rey isn’t entirely sure that’s supposed to do anything. From the start, this man hasn’t been a bastion of composure. Right now, it feels like he’s lost all control completely, practically vibrating under her. If anger had a texture, it would have been scraping over her skin, all points and jagged edges.

“Shoot!” she demands.

“Wh--”

“ _Shoot!_ ” And she knocks his hands aside to take the controls herself.

It’s like time slows down. She’s aware of her too-fast pulse, the breath coming sharp in her ears. Her hands tremble. But X-wings had been her favourite vessel to simulate, to go with the helmet she’d found all those years ago. Muscle memory takes over, and if this fighter has been upgraded since the flight sim she patched up, it turns out there’s not much to ‘point and shoot’. There’s a tracking computer, but she does it all on instinct.

First, the TIE fighter, making sure it can’t fire on them again. And then - harder, so much harder - the missiles heading for them. The X-wing rocks with the wave of energy that washes back over them.

She whoops, pure exhilaration, twisting her head back to make sure the jerk in the cockpit realised how freaking awesome she just was.

She slams straight into his look of flat disbelief.

“How did you do that.”

Rey has spent a lifetime being yelled at. By Unkar Platt, by other scavengers. On Jakku a soft voice is something to be suspicious of, so when this man gets all quiet and intense at her, she feels her hackles raise.

“I pressed shoot,” she responds, a tremor of irritation ruining her own attempt at a flat tone. “Just like you could have, if you weren't too busy losing your mind.”

His face is so close, she can see the exact mechanics of it as he swallows and grinds his jaw, the connected muscle in his cheek jumping.

“You're right. _I_ could have.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

But he doesn't reply, dark gaze skipping over her to the looming monstrosity outside. Rey huffs, turning back to stare at the same thing. In the wake of her exhilaration, the fear starts to creep back in.

“Would you stop that?” he growls.

“Stop _what_.”

“Panicking. You're making it hard for me to think.”

“Oh, I'm panicking? That's rich, coming from you, Mister Flick-Every-Switch like it might do something!”

“I was trying to get us out of the tractor beam!”

“ _It's a tractor beam._ ”

They both bite off into silence, but she can feel his rage and frustration coiled in every inch of him. Representative of the Resistance or not, Rey’s getting the impression that there's more to this man than his terrible personality is letting on.

“Do you at least have a plan?” she tries finally.

“The second the hatch opens, get out and take cover.”

 _That’s not a plan_ , she wants to protest, but they’re setting down inside the hangar now and his arm his reaching around her, pressing the door release. The way he shifts tells her that she’s getting dumped somewhere uncomfortable if she doesn’t move, so she scrambles over the side of the fighter and hits the ground with a bone-jarring force.

For a moment, nothing happens. He’d said take cover, but if anyone shoots at the fighter, the droids are going to be in danger. “R2, get out,” she commands, unlatching the makeshift pouch she’d made to lash BB-8 to the hull - and not a moment too soon, either. She’s almost glad they ended up here, because the metal rope is already starting to fray. It occurs to Rey she has no idea how they’re getting out of this place again

BB-8 whirs gratefully at her, and that’s when R2 barrels into her at full speed, knocking her behind a bunch of crates. She yelps, and that’s when things start to explode.

The Resistance man launches himself from the X-wing in a jump that’s too high to be believable. Under the harsh light of the hangar, she can see he’s dressed all in black, dark hair tied in a knot near the nap of his neck. When he hits the ground, some sort of shockwave billows out in a ten foot radius; Stormtroopers, half of whom are still bemused by the arrival of the X-wing, go flying everywhere.

A hum of energy splits the air with a purple blade. Rey watches, open-mouthed, as he slices through a dozen troopers in the space of three heart beats, moving in a straight line down the center of the hangar.

There's another figure in black there. Two others are running from him - another Stormtrooper and a man in a jacket she's almost sure she recognises.

BB-8 whistles.

“Are you sure?”

The following series of beeps assures her that _of course_ it’s sure who its master is, and a weight of guilt Rey hasn’t been willing to recognise abruptly lifts off her shoulders. She breathes,and the Resistance man throws out an arm and stops a canon blast right in mid-air.

_Poe Dameron is alive. I didn’t get someone killed. Also, pretty sure that guy’s a Jedi._

“AALTO!” the man roars, and for a moment, everything seems to stop. Except for Dameron and the Stormtrooper, who are definitely heading for a TIE fighter. “FIGHT ME, YOU COWARD.”

The figure in black turns and runs. An inhuman snarl rips itself from the Jedi’s throat, and he throws himself through the melee after him. Rey stares for a moment, at the chaos surrounding them, and swallows. The deeper he gets into the ship, the less chance he has of getting away, and Rey isn’t convinced he’s in a state of mind to realise it.

“This is stupid,” she tells the droids.

R2 whistles his agreement over BB-8’s chirp of confusion. Rey pulls a face at the older droid, checks her back for the holocrons, and starts to make her way carefully around the chaos to the corridor that had swallowed both men.

* * *

Honestly, Dolari Ren had had other plans for this day. One of the plants in her room is dying. Granted, that’s not all that unusual when it comes to lifeforms existing in close proximity to her, but she doesn’t think that’s the problem this time. Living in a spaceship probably has something to do with it, but she’d really wanted to spend her time in the evening confirming that fact. Guesswork is not her preferred way of doing things.

And then a ripple of energy explodes through the Force, and there goes that idea. She gives a little sigh, small shoulders sagging as the hungry thing inside her opens its maw, licking the edges of the power surging through the _Finalizer_.

 _Ben Solo._ Of course it’s Ben Solo. No other Jedi would risk the international incident that outright attacking a First Order Star Destroyer would cause. No Jedi would risk getting so close to Snoke’s power.

And somewhere, underneath all of that anger, is a smaller spark. She frowns. _Two_ smaller sparks. One she recognises as easily as Ben’s - and Aalto is going to need saving soon, she’s sure of it - and the other--

She stretches, feeling the pop of her spine setting into place. Her fingers toy idly with the beads in one braid - white and green - before she hits the door release to her quarters and quietly heads towards the chaos on the lower levels.

Dolari Ren is hungry. And a new meal has just stepped on board this ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all your feedbackguys! I'm so glad you're enjoying the fic so far <3


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh gosh, i'm so sorry this took me so long to update you guys! i definitely didn't plan on that. hope this chapter is worth the wait <3

Someone’s chasing her.

That’s not really surprising, all things considered. Rey is on a _Star Destroyer_ , after all. In a scavenger vs Stormtrooper showdown, the fact that she’s still alive to be running is probably the surprising part. A T-junction looms up ahead, and she holds her breath, picking on instinct to swing left--

Right into someone else.

She shrieks, lashing out on instinct. The figure falls back for a moment, but there’s a tickle in her mind, a strange urge for calm in a situation where she should be running with fire in her veins. It only lasts for a moment, but that’s enough for the figure to grab her, pinning her arms to her side. The sound of yelling and blaster fire continues in the distance.

Sour breath curls over her face, masked by the artificial scent of mint. She can hear it clacking against teeth, mouth too close to her ear. He - and she’s mostly sure it’s a he - is winded, and she’s not completely convinced that she isn’t partially holding him up somehow.

“Rey,” he says, and her name sounds like pure wonder in his throat.

“Who _are_ you?” she demands, struggling against his hold. It’s not the first time she’s ever been grabbed, but she’s usually - there’s something - she can’t--

“I’m sorry,” and he does sound apologetic, his forehead resting briefly against her temple. “It’s not supposed to happen like this. _He’s_ not supposed to be here. _Leave._ ”

That last, she realises, isn’t directed at her. The clattering of footsteps stops, and she manages to get her head to twist over her shoulder, past the pale man holding her, to watch the Stormtroopers that had been chasing her turn as one and run back in the other direction.

Is it the training? Or - something else? The same thing that stops her from kicking him in the shin like she _knows_ she can, if she could just summon the will to do it.

“Let go,” she snarls. “I don’t know you. I don’t _want_ to know you.”

“That’s okay. You will.”

There’s a chill of foreboding to his voice that makes her freeze, just for a moment. And in that moment, the yelling and the blasters stop. Rey has to wonder if her hearing has gone, but she can still hear the huff of his breath as he tries to catch it. Her eyes slide down the hallway, as if in slow motion.

The Jedi is there.

His hair is sweat-slicked and shoved back off his face, chest heaving with exertion. She can _taste_ the irritation in the air, the pale man behind her barely able to keep himself contained.

“I told you to stay behind,” the Jedi growls. The very air seems to shiver with his words.

“We have to _get off_ this thing again, remember?” she shoots back. “You weren’t exactly leaving yourself an exit route.”

Neither, Rey realises, has she. The downside of acting on instinct is that instinct almost never has a back-up plan.

“She doesn’t want you here, Kylo Ren,” the pale man huffs. The eagerness is his voice is more than a little distressing. “We have business.”

“I don’t have any business with you!”

She can’t tell if it’s her words or the Jedi’s presence or something else entirely, but the pale man sucks in a breath like someone’s punched him, and Rey remembers how to headbutt.

The crunch of cartilage is the best thing she’s heard all day, and it has been a _very_ long day. Her elbows remember how to work and she makes good use of those as well, the air coming right back out of the pale man when she shoves them into his gut. She stomps on his foot for good measure, even though he hasn’t tried to fight back at all. He makes one half-hearted grasp after her, but all he manages to grab is her satchel. One hard tug, and he doesn’t even have that.

The second she’s free, the Jedi is on the move. But there’s a stagger to his step, and he doesn’t seem to be moving as fast now as he was when he first started throwing Stormtroopers around.

“Over-exerted himself,” a flicker of blue sighs from the corner of her eye. “ _Again_.”

“Stay out of the way,” the Jedi pants as he charges past her. The black sleeve of his robe brushes against her before Rey can yell something indignant back, and that’s when the world drops out from under her.

* * *

“This guy’s a friend of yours, right?” Finn yells, as a canon that takes three troopers to put together straight up levitates. Levitates _aggressively_ , sending those same three troopers - and a whole handful more - flying.

Finn has learnt more about the Force in the last couple of days than he has in a lifetime, and he thinks that if he lives out the rest of his life without having to learn anything else about it, he’ll be happy. Or at least, he’ll be alive.

“In a manner of speaking,” Poe yells back. “Listen, can you hunker down for maybe five minutes? There's something I gotta do.”

Finn ducks a stray blaster bolt. “The hell do you have to do under enemy fire that isn't escape?”

He catches a flash of white, a sharp smile lighting up under a nearby exploding shuttle. “I promised BB-8 I'd come back for it.”

And then he's gone, smile and all. Finn is pretty sure BB-8 is a _droid_ name, but by the time he thinks about how insane that is, he's already diving after Poe Dameron’s back.

“Are all Stormtroopers this bad at listening?” Poe demands, as he catches up and they start to make their way down the side of the hanger bay. Finn can’t be sure, but there’s a figure on the opposite side that sure looks like the girl from Jakku currently heading into exactly the place he’d been trying to keep her _out_ of.

“What is wrong with you people?” he mutters, shoving Poe behind a stack of crates that he sure hopes aren’t full of more explosives. Whose idea was it to have so much weaponry lying around in the open, anyway? “And _no_. Stormtroopers are great at listening. I’m--”

 _Not_ , he realises. And that's always been his problem, hasn't it? He might be the best in his squad, might know how to do every other thing a Stormtrooper needs to do. But he's always been bad at listening.

Phasma is going to be so disappointed.

“Anyway,” he recovers, not smoothly at all. “A droid, man? _Seriously?_ ”

“I made a promise,” Poe says, which makes no sense at all. Finn would have asked more questions, if a Stormtrooper hadn’t popped up from between two crates and grabbed the guy in a headlock.

A blaster works a dent into the soft skin over Poe’s temple. Finn’s is in his hands before he can think about it, training so ingrained it's instinct.

Except training includes _shoot don't think_ , and neither him nor the other trooper are shooting.

“Surrender!” the other trooper barks, and it's Nines. Of course it is. Maybe any other trooper would have realised that Finn was helping Poe rather than chasing him, but Nines knows him about as well as anyone can know anyone in the First Order army. “I won't ask again!”

Finn looks at Poe, and there's real fear in the man's eyes. Why wouldn't there be? He's a Resistance man in the middle of two First Order mooks, and he has no reason to keep faith in Finn. An escape that doubles as a rescue, sure, but--

“Hey,” Poe says, and the blood at his mouth cracks with that smile. “Run.”

It’s around then that the little orange droid slams into Nines’ calves. The guy barely jolts - but he does look down in confusion, a split second of distraction that allows Finn to aim and fire. One, to the hand. One, to the torso. Nines staggers, dragging Poe with him - and falls. Poe wrestles out of a grip suddenly gone limp, and the trooper hits the ground without him.

For a moment, they stare at each other.

“You’re pretty bad at listening, you know that?” the other man says finally. Finn is halfway through a slightly hysterical laugh when the droid whistles an urgent query - he doesn’t speak Binary, but he can understand the gist of _shouldn’t we be running?_ He swallows, nodding at the still form of Nines.

Is it his imagination, or is it twitching? “Saved your butt, didn’t it? Grab that blaster. We need a new plan.”

Poe pauses, one hand grabbing the blaster, the other one giving the droid’s dome a quick pat. “New plan? What’s wrong with--” He glances at the chaos in the hanger. Lucky for them it seems like Nines is - was? - the only trooper paying them any attention.

Finn supposes that when a damn Jedi comes slamming into your star destroyer, you stop worrying about one random Stormtrooper and the prisoner he may or may not be trying to escape with.

“Ah,” Poe says. They’re crouching now, completely hidden by the crates. “Guess we sort of lost the element of surprise.”

A new whistle pipes up, and Finn about jumps out of his armour. A truly ancient R2 droid rounds the crates, a little singed, but otherwise unharmed. Poe’s expression takes on a pained edge.

“Yes, R2, I know TIE fighters can’t go into hyperspace, but we were sort of limited for--”

The old droid makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a snort, dome swivelling. Finn still has no idea what it said, but he’s got eyes. And right now, he can see that the droid is looking straight at General Hux’s _Upsilon_ -class command shuttle.

“...Can you fly that?”

That grin is irrepressible. “I would _love_ to fly that.”

“Great.” Finn eyes the rest of the hangar, full of weaponry and soldiers, in clear view of command in their little box. “So now we just have to get to it.”

* * *

There aren’t a lot of things in the galaxy that Ben Solo is afraid of.

He doesn’t have the space for it. When you live with whispers in your head, everything else sort of pales in comparison. He might have said _my mother_ , when he was younger (he might have said _losing my mother_ , or even _losing both of them_ ).

Now, though? Now there are the whispers.

And Dolari Ren.

Somewhere behind him, the girl staggers. That means something, but Ben is going to have to deal with it later. Right now, he can feel the Force slipping away from him, his grasp on it almost casually undone by Dolari’s presence.

Aalto, cowering behind the human woman’s tiny frame, doesn't appear affected. Ben's lip curls despite the cold sweat dotting it. Is the coward that weak? Or has Dolari finally learnt control, here of all places?

“I told you,” Aalto mutters, as Ben tries to convince himself to move forward, just one step. “Dolari, I said she'd be here.”

“You also said she'd be here alone, dear.” The woman's voice is as soft and gentle as Ben remembers from childhood, even as the fingers of her power dig into his bones. She looks the same, dark skinned and angelic, hair in a hundred tiny braids back from her face. He can even see the beads, one white and one green. He resists the urge to tug on a lock of his hair, long since grown back. “It's good to see you, Ben.”

“If only I could say the same.”

Behind him, the girl makes a sound of abject frustration. “Who _are_ you people?”

“You know,” Aalto pipes up, and there's a light of hysteria in pale eyes that Ben _also_ remembers from his childhood. “You will know.”

Dolari shushes him. Ben grunts, one knee buckling. Her hooks are in deeper than he'd thought, and a memory of shriveled husks drifts across his mind. Another memory.

“Sorry,” she says, and she does sound genuinely apologetic. “I haven't eaten in a while, and you - you've always been such a source of pain.”

He bares his teeth at her, using every bit of himself to launch forward. But his strength is sapped, the Force a whisper where it was once a scream; his knee gives way entirely. He thinks he would have fallen if not for a surprisingly strong grip hauling on the back of his robes.

“Are we going to fight?” she demands over his shoulder.

 _Rey_ , something in him says, and he can't tell if it's his thought, or the other's, or yet another memory.

He wants to believe that Dolari’s eyes are the same warm brown as they always were, like everything else. That there’s no flash of yellow there, as she observes the girl.

“No,” she says finally. “I don’t fight.”

Ben snarls, but Dolari is already drawing Aalto away down the hall, and the girl is hauling back on his robes. Weakness overwhelms him, and he falls back.

“We have to go,” the girl hisses in his ear. “I can’t watch my front and my back at the same time, and I don’t trust them farther than I can throw them.”

She’s wrong not to, at least in this single moment. Aalto won’t fight, not when he can run. And Dolari is telling the truth. She doesn’t fight.

She destroys.

 _ **There is a way**_ , and that’s definitely the voice, _**there is a way in which you will never have to fear her again**_.

“Fine,” he snaps, forcing his limbs to collect under him, shrugging off the girl’s hold. “ _Fine_.”

He’s not looking at her face, but he can _feel_ the way the girl rolls her eyes, her irritated huff stirring his hair as she grabs his arm and loops it over her shoulders. Ben doesn’t want to admit it, but he needs the help, even if it means stooping nearly a foot to let her take some of his weight.

...Not as far as he might have expected, though. She’s tall, he realises, for a human woman.

“If I die before seeing my family again,” she mutters, dragging him back down the corridor, “I’m going to haunt you for eternity.”

The hall is suspiciously empty.

* * *

Poe’s not gonna lie, even to himself: as days go, today has been pretty shitty.

That said, stealing a First Order General’s personal shuttle is going to go a long way towards fixing that. There’ll be repercussions, not the least that the thing probably has the strongest tracking known to man or alien on board, but Poe’s an officially disavowed person right now, or at least he’s supposed to be.

Unofficial rules of the Resistance - you get taken prisoner, you do whatever the hell you can to get out because they can’t afford to come for you. Ben Solo’s gone and made the situation a little more complicated, but Poe’ll worry about that once they’re all out of this mess.

“What about the girl?” There’s a genuine concern shining in Finn’s eyes - Poe should probably tell him to stick his helmet back on - and not for the first time that day, he’s grateful he decided to trust the guy. “The one who came with the Jedi?”

Poe had considered letting Ben handle that one for maybe half a second before deciding against it. The guy is probably one of the most lethal people in the galaxy, but - he doesn’t have a whole lot of field experience. His decision making capabilities veer strongly in favour of his father, and while Poe has a lot of respect for Captain Solo--

Well. He’s no Leia Organa. And neither is Ben.

“R2’s on it.” He nods up the hanger towards the droid, which is doing a fair impression of a panicked First Order model, whirring closer and closer to what they’re all hoping is a control room.

“That droid looks older than me!”

Poe grins. “It’s older than me, buddy, and still going strong. Trust me, that thing’s got more tricks up its sleeves than you and I put together. This thing’s got control panels and access points scattered the whole way through, right?”

“Obviously, but--”

“It won’t for much longer. Listen to me, when I say go, we run like hell for the shuttle, all right. Can you shoot cannons as well as as you can use a blaster?”

Finn looks petrified. Poe can commiserate, but he keeps it off his face. “Never done it before.”

“Great, you don’t have to unlearn anything. Just follow me into the cockpit and--” He gives a quick run down of instructions that basically sum up to ‘point and shoot’, which is probably the bad thing the guy will have to unlearn later, but he’ll think about giving the ex-Stormtrooper proper shooting lessons once he can actually be an Official Ex-Stormtrooper. “BB-8’s gonna get the others.”

“You’re going to trust that little thing to--”

Somewhere in the depths of the Star Destroyer, yelling erupts. It comes closer and closer, cresting on a wave of fried electronics and the smell of burnt meat. Poe tries not to think about that too hard, tries not to think that if this Stormtrooper is capable of defecting, who else might be? The main task is getting out. He’ll deal with the rest later.

“ _Run_ ,” he yells, as R2 comes screaming out of the control room. He bursts into motion, ignoring the ripping pain in his body. He - okay, he hasn’t been through worse, but he knows what typically comes out of the First Order torture chambers. He’s lucky, and right now he’s using that luck to run.

And shoot. Not all of the the troopers have gone after Ben and the girl, and there’s a cluster of them around the shuttle. Poe picks them off one at a time, but he’s too slow, his blaster aimed at one white figure just as another raises his own blaster to shoot--

Blaster fire whizzes past his ear, slams into the trooper’s gut. “I got your back,” Finn cries, and that’s when BB-8 comes tearing out of a side corridor, slightly singed, but otherwise fine. Bringing up the rear is the girl from the Jakku market with Ben Solo draped over her shoulders, slightly more singed, but still in motion.

Finn and Poe reach the shuttle and it’s minimal cover, and if Poe slams right into it, well, he’s having a bad day. He briefly thanks the Force for emergency door releases, punches the external button, and tears up the ramp. Finn’s hard on his heels, and for the first time since he got captured, Poe lets himself think he might just get out of this in one piece. He hits the cockpit and starts flicking switches.

“BB-8!” the girl from the market cries. “No!”

“Leave it!” Ben snaps, and Poe decides he owes him a punch in the face when a low _boom_ echoes throughout the hangar. He doesn’t know what’s exploded, but he hopes it was important and in the way.

 _I’ll come back for you_. His own voice is accusatory in his ears as he preps for space flight but he has other people to think about, other people to save. The clanky trundle of an R2 unit coming up the ramp makes him think of the General, what she’d say.

_Save as many as you can._

Footsteps - one set walking, the other being dragged. Next to him, Finn’s started shooting.

“ _Go, go, go_ ,” the trooper yells.

Poe hits the button to raise the ramp, and goes.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LATE AGAIN i am sorry friends. i am trying something new with less POVs but more detail for this chapter, i hope you like it <3

Poe sets course for Takodana and has half a second to watch the black bleed into blue hyperspace before Ben faints.

“ _Oof_.” The girl, the one from the market, staggers under his weight. She’s not small, but neither is Ben.

“Here--” Poe lurches from his seat, an itch in his fingers, a need to help. “I got you.”

Except there’s a tremble running through his body that he doesn’t notice until he’s trying to grab Ben and failing, miserably. The girl blinks at him, eyes wide, and then Finn is there. He takes the Jedi off both their hands, easing him into one of the empty seats lining the side of the shuttle.

“All right?” he asks softly.

Poe runs a hand through his hair, flashing a grin at both of them. It almost feels normal. “What can I say? It’s been a long day.”

In his mind, Leia dies again. Awfully, obscenely - he’d shut his eyes, but it does nothing to stop it. His father follows. Ben. Members of his squadron. He knows how his mother dies, but whatever started this in his head hadn’t, or doesn’t care if it did. He shuffles over to Ben, checks his pulse and his breathing. Stable. No other signs of injury.

“I’ve seen Jedi like this before,” he tells the others. “Pretty sure it’s exhaustion, after slamming through a Star Destroyer like that. He should be fine.”

And if he’s not, there’s exactly nothing Poe can do to fix it.

“Day’s not over yet,” he adds. “Ten to one there’s a tracker on this thing. We’ve got a small advantage while they don’t know where we’re going, but once we’re out of hyperspace, we’re gonna want another ship.”

“ _Hyperspace?”_ The girl abruptly forgets all about Ben and rushes to the cockpit, staring at the blue lines scoring the view. Poe’s gotta wonder how long she’s been on that barren planet, half expects to have to start fending off thanks - except the look on her face isn’t gratitude. Not even close. “I have to get back to Jakku!”

“ _Jakku?_ ” Finn splutters, which saves Poe from doing the same.

His hands are still trembling. The autopilot’s on, but he eases back into the pilot’s seat anyway. “Jakku’s not an option right now,” he says, gentle as he knows how. He might not have been expecting that response, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to deal with it. “We just did some serious damage to a pretty important ship in the First Order’s fleet. Plus, if I’m not mistaken - you’ve got something they want.”

The girl stills. To her credit, she doesn’t look at her bag, where Poe figures at least one holocron is. Her hand twitches, like she’s reaching for a weapon no longer in her possession.

“Wait.” Finn looks between them. “Wait. You’ve got the holo-things?”

She scrunches her nose up. “Aren’t you a Stormtrooper?”

Finn looks down at his armour, scored with blaster fire. “I was,” he says, and there’s such a vulnerability in the breath after the words that the girl snaps her teeth on whatever she was about to follow up with.

“Look.” Poe holds his hands out, soothing. They aren’t trembling anymore, in the face of something more important - managing these two. “Let’s backtrack. We’re safe for the next little while, and - like it or not - we’re stuck together for now. It’s time to pool our resources. Star from the beginning.” He pokes a thumb at himself. “I’m Poe.”

For a moment he worries that he’s about to deal with a mutiny on a ship he’s not even the captain of. But the girl’s face settles into grim agreement, shoulders slumping. She drops into another seat, just out of reach of the rest of them.

“FN - Finn.” His new friend’s face twitches into something like a smile, before he gives his focus to the girl. “You’re the scavenger, right? The one who had the droid.”

Grief flickers across her face, echoes in Poe’s gut. He’s grateful, at least, that BB-8 spent its last few days in the company of someone who clearly recognised what a singular droid it was.

“That’s me,” she says softly. “I’m Rey. And - Poe, I’m sorry about BB-8. I wanted to go back to him, I tried, but--”

She scowls at Ben, still unconscious.

“BB-8 know the risks,” Poe assures her around the lump in his throat. “And Ben - Ben made the right call.”

“So his name _is_ Ben? The creepy guy called him something else.”

Finn stares. “You stormed a Star Destroyer with the guy and you don’t even know his name?”

“It wasn’t exactly my decision! If you people hadn’t been willing to kill for these creepy things, I wouldn’t have been with him at all.” She rattles her bag at him, and then immediately looks like she wishes she hadn’t. Her arms cross over her chest. “What’s a Jedi doing on Jakku, of all places?”

 _Points for effort on the subject change_. Poe, for a moment, debates telling them the whole truth. But they’re pooling their resources, and having Ben? When he’s conscious, that’s a pretty big resource.

Well. When he’s conscious and willing/able to help, at least.

“He’s an historian. His area of expertise isn’t exactly Jedi history - more like the history of the Force, and people who use it.”

Two sets of eyebrows go up. Rey’s, he notes, look particularly shifty.

“It was his idea to go looking for the holocrons. When I got captured, I guess he decided to come after them himself.”

“Not you?” Finn seems offended on his behalf, which is flattering. Poe manages another grin.

“Ben’s a goal oriented sort of person. I don’t hold it against him, he’s had a rough upbringing.” A beat. “Uh. And you should know. When I say he’s a Jedi called Ben, I mean he’s _the_ Jedi called Ben. Ben Solo.”

Three pairs of eyes lock on the prone form, two in various stages of disbelief.

“Stang,” Rey mutters. “Who would’ve thought he was such a jerk?”

* * *

 _The_ Jedi called Ben is awake. Which is a good thing in the grand scheme of things, but the way he unfolds his legs and stalks over to the pilot’s chair is, if Rey is being honest, kind of creepy.

Everything about him is unsettling. Finding out he's the son of the world's most notorious smuggler - oh, and that he's a madly overpowered Jedi she hadn't even been sure existed until now - doesn't help with that. She tears her eyes away from him, focuses on the Stormtrooper instead. Finn.

“I suppose I know why you didn't take me prisoner now,” she says. “Thank you.”

He looks at her for a moment like he's never heard the words _thank you_ in his life, and Rey's heart clenches with keen recognition.

“You - uh, you do?”

“You're a part of the _Resistance_?” and if she's caught up for a second in Han Solo’s son and a Resistance pilot and an undercover Stormtrooper, she doesn't care. “You...are a part of the Resistance, right?”

Anything to take her mind off the blue lines painting the viewport to match the flicker in the corner of her eye. To avoid thinking about BB-8. To forget the way the pale man had whispered her name with reverence and recognition. Like he knew her.

It has been a long time, Rey thinks, since anyone knew her.

Finn opens his mouth to say something, probably about how he can’t talk about the Resistance with her yet, when an explosive sound comes from up front. It takes her a moment to realise that the sound is an actual word.

“ _Takodana_?” Ben’s on his feet so fast, he sways from the force of it. “The weight of the First Order’s about to come crushing down on us, and you’re taking us to a pirate bar?”

“I didn’t think your mother would appreciate it if we brought the weight of the First Order crushing down on the base.”

There’s a note of dry humour in Poe’s voice, but Rey remembers the shake of his hand from before, the dried blood on his face. Guilt paints the back of her throat sour. _It’s fine_ , he’d said, forgiveness easy on his tongue. _You were afraid. I would’ve been too_.

Rey’s starting to think that Poe Dameron is a bit of a liar, that he isn’t afraid of nearly half the things he ought to be. He continues the trend now, flying their stolen shuttle with an ease as true as that forgiveness. He doesn’t even look at Ben.

Ben, who Rey would have expected volume from, hand in hand with his sudden rage. But while the anger is there, trembling with exhaustion in his limbs, it comes out quiet. One hand on the back of Poe’s seat, leaning in close to the other man. Finn’s fingers slowly curl around his blaster, and relax again.

“Yavin Four,” Ben says, and his voice is flat. “Hosnian Prime. _Tatooine_. You think the Hapes Cluster is going to stand for a Star Destroyer entering their space?”

Rey snorts. Three heads turn to stare at her. She tips her head up, refusing to be intimidated by any of them even though Ben is the only one actively trying.

“What.”

“I might just be a scavenger from Jakku,” she says, and if her voice is tight it’s because she can see it in his eyes, the incredulity that she might have dared interrupt his very important - if very quiet - tirade. “But even I know Hapes is just as likely to _shoot_ us out of the air. Or did you forget we’re in a First Order shuttle?”

“She’s right,” Poe says quickly. Ben doesn’t turn back to him, his dark gaze lingering on Rey. She keeps her chin out. “We already went over our options while you were out of it. I’m not dropping this on your uncle’s lap, not when they’ve got two Knights of Ren with them and we’re still not sure what the Order’s objectives regarding the Academy are. The Hosnian system’s too far away, and getting a ship on Tatooine is about as easy as getting water.”

“Hapes is not going to shoot us down.”

“Yeah, and the Queen Mother doesn’t have eyes on every border patrol, even if your crush on her hadn’t been completely one-sided.”

 _That_ gets Ben to stop looking at her finally, a low growl of annoyance in the back of his throat. Rey exchanges a Look with Finn, finding it abruptly difficult to bite back a smile. Finn doesn’t even try, and the sight of his grin in the midst of all this chaos and confusion is enough to make something unknot at the nape of her neck where she carries her tension. She gets up, crosses the shuttle as Ben and Poe devolve into arguing again - or at least, Ben is arguing. Poe is mostly deflecting.

“You ever expect to end up in the company of people who could have crushes on someone with a name like Queen Mother?” she asks Finn, dropping into the seat next to him. Her bag hits her thigh, the holocrons unnecessarily loud as the clack against each other. They both look at it, just for a second.

“Honestly?” Finn says after a beat. “I didn’t have a whole lot of expectations for the future. Being alive is the surprise right now. Queen Mothers and Jedi? Sure, you know?”

Endless white scratches stretch before her, days of heat and thirst repeating themselves over and over. Rey swallows, throat suddenly dry.

“Sure.”

“Hey, listen. About the Resistance, there’s something I should--”

“Fine.” If the word were any more clipped, it’d just be a grunt. Ben shoves back from Poe’s seat, jabbing his finger at the other man. “But you’re dealing with her.”

“For someone who claims to feel the way you do about his father, you sure do act--”

“Shut up, Dameron.”

“You know you don’t outrank me, right?”

Ben closes his eyes with the air of someone long suffering, and just walks away. Rey catches a flash of Poe’s own smirk before it’s blocked off by the hulking man towering over her. She looks up - and up again again, over his outstretched hand.

“The holocrons.”

His face - long nose, sticky-outy ears, pale as a corpse - looks nothing like Unkar Plutt’s. And yet. Rey picks up her satchel and hugs it closer to her chest, eyeing the Jedi suspiciously. It’s not like she can do anything if he decides to take it from her - he is a _Jedi_ , even if a very tired Jedi.

But she’s so tired of people taking things from her.

“We’re pooling our resources,” she hears herself saying. “Poe told us the most. That these holocrons are apparently important than anything else on your to-do list, even him. That the crazy people who nearly killed us were Knights of Ren and used to be Jedi. Finn told us about what kind of response the First Order’d be able to raise, and that they want these things because they think they’ve got a list of Jedi children. I _have_ them, so what’re you--”

“A list of Jedi children?” He cuts his gaze to Finn, who scowls back at him, clearly not all that fond of his tone either. “What do you mean, a list of Jedi children? Why would they think that the holocrons have a list of Jedi children.”

“Hey, back off a bit, would you? I’m not your enemy.”

“You’re a _Stormtrooper_.”

“He helped save us all, including your unconscious ass, so sit the hell down Solo,” Poe calls from the helm. “And I’m thinking it’s because the First Order doesn’t know what we were really after.”

His jaw visibly clenches, and Rey idly wonders if she’s ever been more tempted to punch a man in the face. The flicker in the corner of her eye coalesces into a gently glowing figure (that audibly sighs), and she’s forced to reassess. _Two men_.

“Uh,” Finn says. “What _are_ we really after?”

“A Forge,” Rey blurts. Again, with the staring. “At least. That’s what one of the things showed me when I opened it.”

“ _You_ opened it,” Ben says, disbelieving, at the same time Poe pipes up.

“Can’t they only be opened--”

Ben waves an irritable hand, and surprisingly, it actually works. Poe cuts himself off with a click of teeth, and Rey _really_ wants to know what’s so serious that it actually makes them stop bickering like an old married couple.

Ben stoops, until he’s crouched in front of her. Tall as he is, it brings him to just below her head level. Rey swallows, fingers winding into the strap of her bag. She wishes she still had her staff. Or BB-8. He has very long eyelashes. She can count all his moles.

“Tell me what you heard,” he says, and his whisper is somehow more forceful than a shout. “Please.”

It’s almost enough to make her want to do it. There are dark shadows under his eyes and the pallor to his skin isn’t entirely natural. The edge of need in his voice - it’s real. General Organa had told her to trust him over the comms, but who is General Organa other than a voice and a legend?

“We’re pooling our resources,” she repeats. “If you want my help, you have to give some as well. You already took me from my - from Jakku. It’s not fair to ask me, or Finn, to help without letting us know what’s up.”

The look on his face says that he isn’t sure he _is_ asking for their help, but then Poe throws a loose screw at his shoulders and it’s wiped away by irritation. He hunches them up around his ears for a second, before abruptly relaxing.

“If you betray us, I’ll kill you.”

“Right, because _I’m_ going to go back to the First Order after crashing their Star Destroyer, and Finn’s going to go back now they know he’s a spy.”

Finn makes a vague noise of distress in the back of his throat, but Rey is too busy staring Ben down. She expects him to scoff, to bluster.

But all he does is stare right back.

“They have their ways.” He unfolds his limbs again, straightening to his full height. There’s a certain relief in his frame as he allows himself to sprawl in one of the seats again. Rey wonders just what it means for a Jedi to be so drained, he falls unconscious. “And it’s not just a forge I’m interested in. It’s called the Star Forge. The last known record of it is from four thousand years ago, and if I’m right, it might just save us all.”

It’s certainly a dramatic pronouncement. Rey blinks, uncertain of how to proceed from here. But Finn, more than anyone else on this shuttle, feels like he’s on her side. She’s not sure why she feels that, other than that clench of recognition in her chest, the hollow loneliness in her gut that knows its match when it sees it. So she glances at him, sidelong, and watches as he sits forward.

There’s an intensity to him, in moments. Brief moments, but still. It’s been a long day.

“That’s a pretty dramatic statement without much detail, you know.”

“Really.”

“Uh huh.”

“Would you like to go into detail on what you, a Stormtrooper, has been doing to stop the First Order from overthrowing--”

“ _Solo_.” Another screw pings off his shoulder. Poe has good aim. “They aren’t wrong. And I’m not usually in favour of spreading the Resistance’s business to all and sundry, but these are pretty exceptional circumstances. They’re involved now.”

There’s a finality to the words. One that feels incompatible with the ever-present _JakkuJakkuJakku get back to Jakku_ scratching lines in the back of her skull. It’s enough to make Rey want to throw the bag at Ben and run.

But they’re on a shuttle. There’s nowhere to go.

“Does the General know you’re this obnoxious?” Ben growls.

Poe laughs. “C’mon. You know the General’s got a soft spot for obnoxious men. Tell the nice people what they want to know.”

And there’s something in that _they_ that itches at her as well, the way Poe - who is definitely Resistance - talks like Finn isn’t quite with him yet But Rey has to put all that aside, because Ben is talking again.

“It’s called the Star Forge,” he grits out, “because it uses the power of whole stars to forge armies. Ships. Fleets.”

“Droids?” Finn says quickly, and a shiver slips down Rey’s spine. Even a scavenger on Jakku knows about the devastation the Clone Wars wreaked.

Ben rubs at the bridge of his nose. Where she expects irritation at being questioned, there’s only contemplation. She’s starting to wonder if she’ll ever be able to pin this man down.

Hopefully she won’t have to.

Hopefully she’ll be back soon.

“It’s murky.” His tone turns dry. “It’s difficult to be sure about any historical records stretching back over four thousand years. Especially when the Jedi were the ones who kept the records, and the Empire purged those records the best they could, and the First Order is trying it’s hardest to follow in its footsteps.”

 _Invincible might_ , Rey remembers. The holocron had spat out some kind of droid. Not one she’d ever seen before. _Unstoppable conquest_.

It sounded a lot more like something the First Order would be interested in than the Jedi. She eyes Ben skeptically. “If it’s so strong, why is the Order looking for some list of names instead? Why not this?”

The look on Ben’s face says he’d rather have teeth pulled than answer, but Poe is flying one handed, the other idly toying with a small pile of screws that Rey really hopes were extra. Ben gives the other man a quick glance, before rolling his eyes.

“Two theories,” he says shortly. “One, they don’t know about it.” An emotion tugs at his mouth, distaste and something that Rey doesn’t think she’s ever experienced to recognise. He rubs a hand over his mouth, and it’s gone. “Or, they know about it, and there’s something about this list of Jedi that they think is more important.”

There’s a third theory. They’re supposed to be pooling resources, but if he’s not bringing it up, Rey isn’t going to throw the possibility into the ring either. Something about that tug to his mouth, the downward pull of muscle, unsettles her. She doesn’t want to add to it.

“Now,” Ben continues. “Can you tell me what you heard?”

“It wasn’t much.” Slowly, she opens her bag. Rummages around, not exactly sure how she’s going to find the right cube, somehow sure that she will. “Honestly, I’ll just open it again and play it for--”

“Not here,” he says quickly. “In fact, you probably shouldn’t touch them if you can at all...help...it.”

He trails off, staring at her hands. And Rey is staring as well, because when she’d cracked the footlooker, all of the holocrons had been cubes. The thing she holds in her hands now _looks_ like a holocron, the same fragile-looking construction impossibly strong under her grip. But it’s triangular in shape, a tetrahedon wrought in black instead of blue. The more she looks at it, the more she thinks she might see flickers of red.

“That,” the figure in blue says from beside her, “is no good at all.”

* * *

BB-8 is a droid. And some droids, after many years and not enough memory wipes, developed odd tics in their programming that appear to reflect bitterness. BB-8 knows that, technically speaking, Poe Dameron has not been stringent with its memory wipes. The date records of its last one are, in fact, buried under so many other protocols and files that it has become inconvenient to retrieve them.

But BB-8 has not developed any characteristics to resemble bitterness. If it had some time to process this fact, it would put the likely reason as being because of Poe Dameron himself. Poe Dameron is, as much as a droid is able to categorise matters of morality, a good man. BB-8, who has not had a memory wipe in quite some time, loves him.

And so, BB-8 is glad he got away. Even if it means being left behind. That is, it thinks, what it is to be a ‘buddy’.

“It wasn’t supposed to be this way, Dolari.” The Knight of Ren, designated ‘Aalto’, paces back and forth. “She was supposed to come alone. She definitely wasn’t supposed to come with _him_.”

BB-8 is not 100% certain of who _him_ is, but logic implores him to conclude that it is likely Ben Solo, Poe Dameron’s friend, who arrived with the ‘she’. It has become clear over the course of BB-8’s observation from behind a potted plant that ‘she’ refers to Rey.

BB-8, who has not had a memory wipe in quite some time, doesn’t know if it loves Rey. But it does consider her a buddy.

“In every version of events, Aalto?” The woman, smaller, another Knight of Ren designated ‘Dolari’, sounds much calmer than ‘Aalto’. Like she is unconcerned with his strange behaviour. “Does she always come here alone?”

‘Aalto’ stops pacing. He is out of breath, drenched in sweat. He stares at the woman in a manner designated as ‘unsettling’, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She isn’t even looking at him, humming softly as she starts to move amongst her plants. She is watering them, BB-8 concludes.

“No.” ‘Aalto’s tone is designated ‘sullen’. “Sometimes she doesn’t come here at all. Sometimes she’s on Jakku. Sometimes she’s on that damn _ship._ And sometimes - sometimes she’s dead. Sometimes the Stormtrooper isn’t a traitor. Sometimes she bleeds out on the sand and--”

“So aren’t you glad she’s not dead now?” ‘Dolari’s tone is designated ‘soothing’. BB-8 does not need to hold its breath, not needing to breathe at all, but it has not had a memory wipe in some time. It is designated ‘anxious’ occasionally, and with that anxiety comes an urge to shift, to roll back, to hide.

 _That_ , it does its best to suppress.

A pause. “Yes.”

“And you put the Sith holocron into her bag?”

“ _Yes_.”

And weren’t you just telling me how useful such artifacts were two days ago?”

The man designated ‘Aalto’ smiles. It is not a good thing. It is nothing like Poe Dameron.

“Sometimes,” he says, “I’m glad you’re on this path with me. Dolari.”

The woman hums, non-committal.

“The droid’s here this time,” the man continues, as he heads for the door. “But this isn’t the path where I destroy it. Don’t let me down.”

The door hisses shut, and it’s everything BB-8 can do not to whistle in fear. It considers making a fast roll for the door - but it’s shut, and BB-8 is not certain of the probability it will be able to open it in time.

And then the woman designated ‘Dolari’ is there, warm eyes peering at him through the foliage.

“Aren’t you a sweet thing?” she murmurs. “Honestly. He says these things as though I’m flow-walking right next to him.”

Her hands are warm on BB-8’s plating as she lifts it from behind the plant. And BB-8 could squeal, could shock her, could maybe get to the door in time but then what? ‘Aalto’ is there. The Star Destroyer is crippled, but there are Stormtroopers there.

BB-8 has not had a memory wipe in some time. This is how it knows it has a choice in what to do. That it is not just following protocols. That it has its own paths, and can select the best option for itself.

It doesn’t want to be destroyed. But for droids, there are other options.

“What’s your name, little droid?”

 _Initiating...memory_wipe_.

Seconds pass. An eternity, in the world of computer programming.

“I would really hate to destroy you like he wants, you know. It’s just your name. That couldn’t hurt, could it?”

Slowly, the orange and white BB unit tilts its dome back to look at the woman.

A name.

It searches its memory banks. They are, aside from a few assorted files and protocols, empty.

Another eternity passes, before the droid carefully beeps back at the woman. It does not know her designation.

“Buddy, huh?” A smile breaks her face, features designated ‘soft’. “Well, then. Let’s see what else you have to tell me, Buddy.”


	7. Chapter 7

The shuttle is too small.

Ben tells himself to stop looking at the holocron, but there’s a whisper in his ears and a sickness in his gut that won’t let him. _I don’t know what it’ll do if I don’t watch it_. He’d said that to Dameron, who had taken one look at it and him and quietly offered to take the thing.

 _It’s mine_. The words had fallen out of the girl with a ferocity that surprised everyone in the shuttle - including, by the way she’d blinked, the girl herself. She’d dropped it like it had burned her after that, and they’d all watched the thing clatter to the floor, pulsing sullenly.

It doesn’t glow, not really. It eats the light and spits discontent back out. Being near it is like voluntarily sliding your skin up a grater, and he can’t understand how the girl has stood it for this long.

Because there is something, Ben knows, about the girl. Rey. He tells himself that the chances of finding a Force-sensitive in the middle of a karking desert planet are slim to none, but isn’t that what the Force is for? Improbably occurrences. Impossible people. She had opened one of the holocrons, and that couldn’t be done without the Force.

“You guys should turn in,” Dameron says, back in the pilot’s seat. “We’re gonna be in the blue for a while longer yet.”

Because they’re going to Takodana. Ben grits his teeth against the surge of irritation and - something else that shudders through him at the thought. There are few people in the galaxy that annoy him more than Maz Kanata, and now he needs to ask her for help.

He’s not afraid. Being afraid of that little bug would be, frankly, absurd.

“I can fly,” he says, standing abruptly. “One of us was just taken hostage by the First Order, and it wasn’t me.”

He tells himself it’s just logic. Dameron’s exhaustion is starting to encroach on him, and the pilot isn’t even a Force sensitive. It’s not just the tremors wracking his body every couple of minutes. It’s whatever’s going on in the other man’s head. Aalto Ren was on that ship, which never means anything good for anybody. The guy might be a stain on the Force, even for the Knights of Ren, but Ben knows--

Ben knows he’s got a way of getting into people’s minds. Despite not having much of one himself.

“You’re sounding precariously close to caring right now.”

“I care if we crash and die, yes.”

“Do you think they’re always like this?” he hears the Stormtrooper mutter to Rey, who snorts. She’s hugging the bag with the holocrons to her chest, and - and staring at the one on the floor. Just like he had been.

The Sith holocron hadn’t been on her when he’d picked her up, he’s sure of that much. He would have felt it. It would have needled its way into his brain, seeking his attention, demanding--

“I’m not going to crash, Ben.”

His head jerks up at Dameron’s tone, the soft undercurrent that might be reconciliation, or might be more exhaustion. Both, maybe. Ben thinks of that moment in the Force, feeling him break, and grits his teeth.

“Fine,” he mutters, and feels something like relief ease through the other man. _Glad to be of help_ , he thinks dryly.

“What are we doing with this thing?” Rey asks. The wariness in her voice might be the first sensible thing he’s heard out of her since he picked her up.

He wants to pick it up. He wants to tuck it away somewhere in his robes, to be pulled out and poured over in private.

 _ **It’s powerful**_.

He exhales sharply, through his nose. The holocron seems to pulse even darker.

_**You deserve that power. You, who could be master of the Knights of Ren.** _

“Put it in the box with the others,” he says shortly. “Give it to Dameron.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know what it would do if you weren’t watching it,” the Stormtrooper says, and Force, Ben _really_ doesn’t like this kid. He definitely doesn’t trust him.

“I’m changing,” he grits out, “my mind. Is that okay with you, trooper?”

“It’s _Finn_.”

“I don’t care.”

“Don’t talk to him like that.” Rey is scowling at him, her body angled like she wants to hide the trooper from view. Her gaze flickers to the holocron, just for a moment, and then back to Ben’s face. “I don’t care if you need a nap, we’re all on the same side here.”

Ben considers pointing out that the boy - _Finn_ \- is literally wearing Stormtrooper armour, but he can feel the anger simmering under his skin, ready to burst through at the slightest provocation.

It’s easy to be provoked. It’s easy to let it all spill out, to rage and destroy and blame it all on his _issues_ in the aftermath.

Control is the difficult part. And Ben, for all of his faults, has always appreciated a challenge.

“Put it in the box,” he repeats, forcing his voice level. “And give it to Dameron.”

She doesn’t say anything around the mulish set to her chin. And yet, Ben thinks he hears...something. Not the usual thick, overwhelming something, either. A whispered accusation, although no one has spoken.

_Why can’t you pick it up yourself?_

The shuttle has limited space, but there’s private quarters and a couple of beds built into the wall. Ben gauges the level of patience he can still grasp at, and feels the last of it slip through his fingers.

He takes the private quarters. They can judge him if they need to, but they’ll at least be safe when they do it.

* * *

“You know, your friend’s a jerk,” Finn whispers, tucking his knees up on the seat next to Poe. Said friend has locked himself away in the private quarters like some kind of prince, but Rey’s curled up on one of the cots and she looks like she could use the rest.

So does Poe, actually. But while Finn isn’t super familiar with him personally, he knows the stubborn set of his shoulders, the way he grips the flight controls. He doesn’t have a lot of field experience, but Stormtrooper training is--

Hard. You push yourself with what you’ve got in you and then you push yourself with what you haven’t got, because failure is worse. Finn’s still not sure if it’s cowardice or strength that pushed him not to fire his blaster at a person, all those times.

“Don’t let him hear you call him that.” There’s a soft humour to Poe’s voice that Finn doesn’t think he’s ever heard in a person before.

“What, jerk? I think he knows.”

“No. Friend.” Poe rolls his neck from side to side. A series of small _pops_ follow the motion. “What do you know about Jedi?”

“Other than shoot on sight?”

Poe snorts, and Finn feels his own mouth pull up into a grin. Pleased, that he can ease some part of what’s going on in the other man’s head.

“No, uh - I don’t know.” Finn rubs his own neck. “There’s what I’ve been told. But I don’t - I dunno if that’s the same as actually knowing anything. I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

“It’s been a rough couple of days for you, huh?”

“Not as rough as yours, I’m pretty sure.”

“Hey.” Poe glances sidelong at him. Finn keeps expecting recriminations, but there’s been none of that so far. At least, not from this man. Ben Solo, as Finn has already figured, is a jerk. “It’s not a competition. We’ve all got our own baggage to carry. Me, you, Rey. Even the jerk.”

Finn raises his eyebrows, glancing back at the closed doors. “If you say so.”

He’s heard about Ben Solo, pampered prince of the corrupt New Republic. His father a thief, his mother the same but worse, better at dressing it up. A Jedi, sure, but weren’t Jedi supposed to be weak? They left their order so easily, flocked to the First Order and the Knights of Ren. It was only there that they became strong.

Or so Finn had been told.

 _I don’t know what to believe anymore_.

“Can you tell me?” he asks abruptly. “About the Jedi?”

He only just met Poe. But he’s finding that there’s a peculiar kind of trust that forms between two people when you have to escape from the clutches of a creepy Knight of Ren together, and then blast the heck out of a mangled Star Destroyer.

A shiver of fear plays down Finn’s spine at the word _Star Destroyer_. The First Order will know who he is now. They won’t know him by name, but FN-2187 will have been called up on half a dozen screens, his history picked over and pried into, the holes in his psyche pulled apart. He doesn’t know what happens to to traitors. No one’s ever been stupid enough to leave.

“Sure.” Poe’s smile is back, and there’s a gratitude in his voice that Finn thinks he understands. Anything for a distraction. “And feel free to ask questions, all right? This isn’t a lesson.”

 _Feel free_. What’s that supposed to mean? But Poe is launching into his story, so Finn rests his chin on his knees and just listens. Right now, the First Order is a hyperspace lane away. This part of the galaxy, at least, feels safe.

“We don’t know much about the Jedi Order before the Empire destroyed it,” Poe says. His thumbs drum on the flight controls, repetitive. Finn isn’t sure if the sound is soothing, or something more sinister. He focuses on the other man’s voice instead. “I think Luke - Master Skywalker - has probably found out more than the general public knows. Between him and Ben, they’ve managed to piece together a lot of the past, but I’m not exactly privy to that level of information.”

A rustling sound from the back of the shuttle lets him know that Rey is waking up. He glances over his shoulder; she rubs at her face before catching sight of his little wave. She pulls the emergency blanket around her shoulders like a shawl, and pads across the shuttle to drop onto the floor next to their seats. Fin immediately makes to stand, but she waves him off with a yawn.

He eyes, she notices, glance towards Poe’s feet where the holocrons are. Finn, personally, has been trying really hard not to think about them. The blue ones are weird enough, but that black one - it seems to want to stick in his mind. Sort of like his training.

“Is it okay if I listen too?” Rey asks.

“The more the merrier,” Poe replies easily. “Good sleep?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Weird sleep. I haven’t ever--” She gestures at the viewport, and hyperspace beyond them. “This.”

“You don’t ever get used to it,” Poe says, like that’s the best thing in the world. “Anyway. Jedi. There aren’t as many as there could be these days, but that’s because of Snoke. Luke set up the Academy on Yavin Four years ago, in the hopes of learning more about what the Jedi used to be, and passing it on to new Force sensitives. Ben was his first student.”

Finn remembers the pale man leading them through the corridors of the Star Destroyer, the sense of doom clinging to black robes, permeating the air. “And Aalto Ren was another one, right?”

“Right. They all were. Every Knight of Ren started off as a member of Luke’s academy.”

“What happened?” There’s a furrow between Rey’s eyebrows. She’s cute.

Poe’s fingers keep drumming. “Nothing. I mean - not in the big dramatic event sense. Jedi - they’re connected to each other through the Force. Everything is, obviously--”

Finn personally hadn’t found it all that obvious, but okay.

“--but Jedi more than most. Your - uh, _the_ Supreme Leader Snoke has been conducting a war of attrition on the Jedi for years now. Honestly, I don’t know a lot of the details, and a lot of what I do know I’ve just sort of picked up through knowing Ben and the General.”

“Is it classified?” The last thing Finn wants is to get Poe in trouble.

Poe flashes him a grin. “We’re pooling resources, remember? There were two Knights of Ren on that ship, and they’re going to be after us the second we come out of hyperspace. Don’t worry, I’ve got the rank to make this kind of call in the battlefield.”

“Strange battlefield,” Rey mutters, winding her fingers into her thin blanket. Finn can’t help but agree.

“It’s going to get stranger,” a new voice growls. All three of them jump with various degrees of guilt as Ben Solo looms over them.

_How the crap does someone so big move so quietly?_

Dark circles ring his eyes, and Finn’s gotta wonder if he got that scowl permanently tattooed on his face or something, because he doesn’t think he’s seen the man wear a different expression since he’d first see him throw himself out of the X-wing.

“Nice timing,” Poe drawls.

“It wasn’t an accident.”

“Didn’t want to face Maz with bed hair?”

“Just fly, Dameron.” That frown sweeps over the rest of them. “My uncle’s an idealist. He’s also the only hope any of us have for a galaxy that isn’t overrun with idiots who think they can bend the Force to their will. The Jedi aren’t what they should be, but our enemies aren’t what they want to be, either.”

 _And just what_ , Finn thinks, _is that supposed to mean?_

“Coming out of hyperspace,” Poe says, “in three, two--”

Finn’s vision blurs, his body taking a second to adjust to sub-lightspeed. They all rock forward, back again, and then Takodana is there.

It’s pretty enough. Most water planets are, in Finn’s opinion, although he hasn’t done the travelling some of the older troopers have. But Rey is scrambling to her feet, hand smacking Finn in the face as she lurches over his seat to get as close to the viewport as possible.

“What--?” Ben snaps, and his hand skims something at the side of his belt. Finn stiffens, but he doesn’t think even this guy is about to pull out a weapon for no reason in the middle of a flight.

Hopefully.

“I didn’t know there was this much green in the whole galaxy,” Rey breathes, and Finn abruptly forgets all about being smacked in the face. He even forgets about Ben Solo, who has finally stopped scowling.

Rey’s face is alight with wonder, and Finn doesn’t understand how one person can hold all of that inside them.

He doesn’t know how to look at the world and see something that the First Order hasn’t tainted, or might one day ruin. But he looks at her face and looks at Takodana, and tries to see the world - this world, just one - through new eyes.

It’s pretty. It might even be beautiful.

“ETA quarter of an hour,” Poe murmurs. “Ben, when we touch down, remember - I’m doing the talking.”

* * *

“Give me back my lightsaber.”

Ben hears a soft groan from behind him, made louder in the sudden silence. Maz Kanata’s bar, as always, is a hellhole, and ever damn alien in it is a gossip. The words _NO FIGHTING_ blare back at him in a hundred different languages scrawled behind the bar, and Ben has never been so eager to disappoint.

Maz, on the other hand, barely gives him a second glance. “I thought I told you to get some manners before you showed your face around here again, Ben Solo.”

Force, he hates the way she draws out his surname. She knows he hates it, too. That’s why she does it.

“It’s - ah, it’s something of an emergency, Maz.”

And the little toad _peers around him_ like he isn’t there, her whole face stretching into a smile. “Poe Dameron!” she crows. “Tell me, what’s the best pilot in the Resistance doing in my little hole in the wall?”

Dameron winces. It’s not clear if it’s because he can see the way Ben is seething as Maz bustles around him, or if it’s because she just announced his identity to a whole bar of people, at least half of whom would sell them out over a round of pazaak.

“Oh, you know. Running from the First Order, the usual. We’ve got an _Upsilon_ -class command shuttle parked out front and ready to trade with the right person, if you’re interested.”

She chuckles. “And by the right person, you mean someone crazy enough to take a First Order shuttle off your hands.”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“Come!” Maz jerks her thumb imperiously towards a table, before grabbing a corner of Ben’s robes and wiping her hands on them. Ben seriously considers kicking her, but he’s seen what happens when the _NO FIGHTING_ rule is broken before. It’s not worth the hassle. He thinks. “I have just the ride for you, but you will have to wait. In the meantime, you can tell me how you got into this mess.”

A fast-growing migraine sets in behind Ben’s left eyeball. “We don’t have time to _wait_. The First Order is bearing down on us, and if you think they’re going to give a damn about your opinions on fighting--”

She waves a dismissive hand. “Stone can be rebuilt. There’s nothing they can take from me here that I can’t win back.”

A couple of patrons appear to disagree with her stance, because there’s a hurried scraping of chairs at that moment.

“You have my lightsaber!”

“By virtue of me having it that would make it mine, wouldn’t you say?”

_**Kill her.** _

Ben reels back, breathing hard. Maz merely crosses her arms over her chest blinking owlishly at him. Like she knows exactly what’s going on inside his head.

Like she’s waiting.

 _There are always stars, Ben._ Is it his voice, or his uncle’s? He doesn’t know. But it’s not the other one, so he wraps the words around himself like a blanket. _There are always stars_. And the planets orbiting them. The Ileenium System. The Yavin System. Between them, or further apart, a ship. The tiniest speck in the Force. Insignificant, and yet, still there.

“You’re lucky I don’t tear this place apart,” he mutters.

Maz reaches up to pat his arm, because she can’t reach his face. “You’re a good boy, Ben Solo.”

He opens his mouth.

“Still no manners, though. The lightsaber will be returned to you at the right moment, and not a beat sooner.” She casts those huge eyes back over the group. “Now, come. Your ride will be here soon, and so will the Order, and I want to know this story before the fun starts.”

A sense of foreboding drapes itself around Ben’s shoulders. He can’t decide if it’s due to the _ride_ part of that little speech, or the _Order_ part.

“Should we be - I don’t know, panicking a little more?” he hears the trooper say.

“I don’t think it’d help,” Rey whispers back.

“We can’t go anywhere without a ship,” Dameron says, like a mother soothing her children. “And trust me, there’s no faster way to get a ship on Takodana than through Maz. We’ll be fine, I promise.”

 _Poe Dameron_ , Ben thinks sourly, _makes promises too easily_.

* * *

The _Happabore_ is a heaping pile of junk, but it’s the only pile of junk that he’s got right now, so he supposes he’ll have to make the most of it. In hindsight, the _Star Commuter 2000_ was an ill-advised purchase, but he’d thought--

Well. He’s thought a lot of dumb things over the course of his life, and probably done more of them. Some kind of alarm is shrieking at him, and there’s definitely steam coming from somewhere, but his co-pilot’s dealing with that. Seeing as the _Happabore_ can barely even handle one pilot, let alone a second one lending a hand.

Besides. He’s got more important things to be dealing with. The comm crackles at him, and he can’t tell if that’s a loose wire, or the spitfire on the other end.

“-- _is your fault, you know_.”

“Hey, hey!” He holds up his hands. Not that she can see him - camera’s shot, too. “I never told him to go charging headfirst into the First Order! In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve said _don’t_ do that. On multiple occasions.”

“ _Remember - doesn’t listen - you_?”

He jabs his finger at the comm. It sparks back at him. Irritation rubs at the old grief sitting in his gut, and it all comes out as anger. “You want me to start listing the places you went wrong, your Generalness? Because we could do this all day.”

Silence. And kark it, he regrets the words the second they’re out of his mouth, but isn’t that every conversation with Leia these days?

Somewhere in the back of the _Happabore_ , the alarm stops blaring. It must have some effect on the comm system because Leia’s voice comes through loud and clear and sad, just for a moment.

“Just bring him home, Han. We’ll fight about the rest of it then.”

He swallows. Nods - but she can’t see that. Camera’s still shot. “Finally,” he tries instead. “Something we can agree on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big thanks to nymja for letting me walk this chapter through with her! and also for the happabore, that nightmare shuttle. go [read her fics!!](http://archiveofourown.org/series/432076)


	8. Chapter 8

It’s easy not to panic when you have other things to deal with.

You’d think that the adrenaline would push you into it, or the near-certain impending doom dogging your footsteps. But Finn’s starting to discover that it’s the quiet that does it. Running is easy. Figuring out what to do when you’re out of places to run is a brand new fear which, frankly, he hadn’t been expecting.

He’d never run away from anything before. _Coward or brave?_ It’s a question he still doesn’t have the answer to.

He follows the others to a table that looks like it might be in the exact middle of the bar, and seriously, don’t any of these people have a sense of self-preservation? The First Order isn’t going to care about Maz Kanata’s _NO FIGHTING_ signs, even if they are written in a bunch of different languages.

Finn catches Rey glancing cautiously at the door, and feels an abrupt surge of protectiveness. Okay, so she’d gotten through the Star Destroyer and so is obviously able to handle herself, but he remembers the way she’d said _I need to get back to Jakku._ Anyone who feels a powerful need to return to that hellhole clearly has some issues, is all he’s saying, and--

He doesn’t think she had the same choice he did. Getting caught up in all of this. Terror tastes sour in the back of his throat, but no one had made him try to rescue Poe. No one had forced his hand into betraying the First Order and making a target of himself.

The hem of his jacket sleeve feels rough under the pads of his fingers as he toys with the cuff. Poe, realising he was dressed in his armour underlay and not much else, had given him his.

Finn thinks about running again. About leaving them all to their crusade and taking off to some other hellhole, some nothing place that the First Order would never bother invading. And then he thinks of the lopsided way Poe had grinned at him when he handed the jacket over. The light in Rey’s eyes as she’d gazed over Takodana.

And he doesn’t know what to think.

“How’d you leave Jakku?” he mutters to Rey, as Poe relays the past couple of days to Maz. For someone who’s bar is probably going to be blown up in about an hour, she doesn’t seem all that fazed about the situation.

Rey blinks at him over the top of some kind of fruit skewer. Her cheeks are bulging with food, and it takes her a couple of seconds to chew, then swallow. He’s not entirely sure if she was bothering with that first part before he spoke to her.

A scowl steals her face. She jerks a thumb at Ben, who definitely notices, and scowls right back. “I hitched a ride with Mister ‘Blow Things Up, Think Later’.”

Ben opens his mouth to shoot something back, and is interrupted by a bark of laughter from Maz. Who then elbows Ben in the side.

Maybe she’s not so bad after all.

“Right.” He waits for the conversation to pick up again before leaning in, lowering his voice. “But, I mean - how’d you decide to go?”

She tears a green think off her skewer, slower this time. If eating can be thoughtful, that’s what she’s doing. “Same as you, I s’pose,” she says around her mouthful. “Escape or die, right? Not much of a choice there.”

It’s around then that Finn remembers she thinks he’s some kind of Resistance spy. And man, is it ever tempting to let her keep thinking that. How easy would it be? To step into someone else’s skin for a bit. To just forget all the complications of being a defective Stormtrooper, and pretend like he’s been a hero all along.

He’d like to be the sort of man who’d risk life and limb for a cause.

“You are conflicted,” Maz says abruptly.

Finn glances around at the others – all of whom are glancing at everyone else, so either they’re all conflicted, or none of them realize they are. The little woman snorts, waving her hand at Poe.

“Not you, you’re just tired. Take a nap already, hero! No—” And those too-big eyes turn on Finn, because that’s the kind of week he’s having apparently. “You. You want to know if you’ve made the right choice.”

“I did the right thing,” Finn says stiffly, edging back. It doesn’t help. Maz – yup, she’s definitely getting up at the table, and he spots Rey hurriedly rescuing her dinner as the woman starts to crawl across the thing towards him.

“The right thing and the right choice are _not_ the same.” She reaches up to adjust her goggles. Her eyes seem to swell, and then contract again with the shifting of her lenses. Finn glances around again for help, but Rey looks like she wants to hear what Maz has to say about as much as he doesn’t, and Poe - actually, Poe really does look like he needs a nap. He’s not sure how long the other man has been awake at this point, but the number of hours isn’t pretty.

He doesn’t bother looking at Ben for aid.

“If you live long enough,” Maz says, “you see the same eyes in different people. I'm looking at the eyes of a man who wants to run. He just doesn’t know in which direction.”

Stormtroopers had never been allowed a full range of emotions. Finn remembers being frustrated, irritated, annoyed - and more so than most of his fellow troopers. But the gaping pit of _something_ that roars open in his gut is a new one, more than all of the others put together.

“You don't know a thing about me,” he growls, teeth clenched. Something else is shuddering through him; it takes him a moment to pin the feeling down as fear, but only a moment. He’s more familiar with that one. “Where I'm from. What I've seen. You don't know the First Order like I do. They’ll slaughter us.”

He remembers an old man taking a blaster bolt to the face. Phasma’s unflinching silver mask, exacting the First Order’s vengeance with terrifying precision. _Kill every tenth villager_. Is it a kinder form of negotiation, to spare the other ninety percent? Or is indiscriminately murdering a group of miners who had come to discuss terms in good faith the cleaner way to go?

The First Order doesn’t care about clean. Not when it comes to getting what it wants. _We all need to run_ sits in the back of his throat, but he looks at Poe and he looks at Rey, and he can’t seem to spit the words out.

Rey reaches out impulsively, snatching his hand up in hers. It’s sticky with the juice from her fruit, and he doesn’t care. “It’s okay,” she says, all earnestness. “You’re free from them now. You don’t ever have to go back.”

Her hands are scarred. Marred with burns and callouses. His fingers tighten around hers, and then relax again. He goes to pull away, but she won’t let him.

That’s when he realises there’s a little tremble running through her. It’s not adrenaline.

“Hey.” And there’s Poe, clapping his hand on his shoulders like they’ve been drinking buddies for years. “You already did the hard part. You left, didn’t you? That’s the bravest damn thing I’ve ever seen.”

Three pairs of eyes turn to look at Ben expectantly - Rey, Poe, and Maz (still on the table). Finn is too busy gaping at Poe and holding Rey’s hand to follow suit, and it’s not like he wants any words of encouragement from the older man anyway. He definitely doesn’t expect any.

Which is why he does, belatedly, turn to stare. Because Ben speaks.

“There’s nowhere you can run that they won’t find you.” He speaks to his cup, absently spinning it on the table. “Do you know how often their conditioning fails? They’re going to want to make an example of you now.”

The terror surges back up Finn’s spine, and that other feeling is still swirling in his gut, ready to lash out. But there’s something in the matter-of-fact tone to Ben’s voice that speaks of...understanding.

Experience.

“You’re have longer if you run away,” Ben admits. “But if they’re going to come for you either way, you might as be with the people who are trying to put an end to it all.”

Silence. Ben blinks, like he’s only just realised they’re all gaping at him. The Eternal Scowl comes back for an encore, and the man slumps awkwardly in his chair, knees knocking the underside of the table. He jabs a finger in Finn’s direction.

“I still don’t trust you.”

“I didn’t ask you to!” Finn snaps back, because yelling at this shitty excuse for a Jedi seems easier than looking anyone else in the eye.

“I love it when things work out,” Maz says happily, rocking back on her heels into a fruit bowl. “Ben Solo! That was almost insightful.”

“Give me my lightsaber.”

“No.”

* * *

Rey thinks she might be afraid.

It’s not the First Order, not exactly. The entire concept of the remnants of an evil empire coming for _her_ of all people is absurd, even if she’s managed to find herself in significant company with significant objects. Rey has been a scavenger for too long, and if it’s been a lonely life and a dangerous one, it’s also been an anonymous one.

_Aalto Ren knew your name._

_Aalto Ren was waiting for you._

Waiting. The word hooks its claws into her the same as always. No one has ever waited for her before. And the people she’s with now are - two thirds of them - wonderful, but one of them is already on the verge of up and leaving her. If her hand shakes when she grabs Finn’s, she doesn’t think she can be blamed.

He stays. For now, at least, perched awkwardly on the edge of his seat, fingers still tangled with hers.

Beyond all of that lurks Jakku.

The planet has baked itself into her bones. She might not be trawling its surface right now, but a part of Rey knows that she hasn’t _really_ left. She wants to go back. She has to go back. How will her family find her, if she isn’t where they left her?

But the image of Takodana framed in the viewport lingers in the back of her mind. Rey has been breathless in pain before. Breathless from running, breathless from being trapped under the sand for days at a time. She can’t remember being breathless in wonder before now. It’s like she’s spent her life missing something, unaware that it was gone until the sight of Takodana had punched her right in the face.

How strange, to find beauty after all that carnage. If Finn is a man who wants to run, Rey is a woman who wants to dig her nails into this moment and not let it slip away like everything else.

“I can’t say this is exactly what I wanted for you,” the blue figure murmurs, soft. He stands behind her, like he wants to rest his hands on her shoulders, but doesn’t. “I’m glad you have it, nonetheless.”

For the first time in recent memory, Rey feels the urge to speak to him. Not growl under her breath or hiss irritably in his general direction, but actually turn and face him. _Who are you?_ sits in her chest. _Why do you care about me?_

But Ben Solo is glaring daggers at Maz Kanata (who is probably the most interesting person she’s met so far on this adventure), his grip white-knuckled on the edge of the table. Rey hasn’t decided if she’s mad at him about what he said to Finn or not (it had seemed to help, after all), but she _is_ mad at him in general.

“What is it _now_?” she demands, and is summarily ignored.

“You _didn’t_ ,” he demands of Maz.

“ _I_ didn’t. You think your father needs a message from me to hunt you down? I’m surprised the man hasn’t been on your tail since you left your little hideout.”

“Your father?” Just like that, Rey’s irritation is swept away, along with any question of how he knows who is coming to get them when Maz never said a name. Two wonders in one day, who would have thought? “Han Solo is our ride?”

“Oh boy,” Poe mutters, and drops his head into his hands. Rey hopes it’s to sleep.

Ben stares at her with what can only be termed _dismay_. “You lived on a backwater hole of a planet on the Outer Rim. How do _you_ know who he is?”

“Uh, I can read,” she shoots back. “And Jakku might be a hole, but that’s what makes it so good for _smuggling_. Stang, have you ever been agreeable a day in your life?”

“You should have seen him around the Hapan Queen Mother,” Maz and Poe say at the same time. Poe lifts his head for a second to grin at the little alien. Rey has never even heard of the Hapan Queen Mother before this past day, but she’s starting to think she might like her.

The bar is starting to empty. Ben shuts his mouth with a click on whatever grumpy thing he was about to fire back at her. His awkward features carefully rearrange themselves into a calm stillness, head tilted very faintly to one side. Like he’s listening to something none of the rest of them can hear.

Rey can relate. Except, what starts as a dry observation about her dubious sanity becomes more immediate as the seconds tick by. The hair on her arms stands up. She is breathless again, and not sure why.

“I need some air,” he mutters, standing. “Dameron. He’s on the _Happabore_. Make sure they get on board.”

Very distantly, she thinks she might hear screaming.

“I know you meant holocrons, but I’m going to pretend you meant the people.”

 _Rey_ , the clink of glasses whispers. _Rey_ , gasps the scrape of chairs.

“Never get tortured again. It makes you ten times more aggravating.”

Poe gives him a sardonic salute, and then Ben Solo sweeps from the bar in a swirl of black robes that is, in Rey’s opinion, way too dramatic.

“Me too,” she mutters, convincing her hand to relax and let go of Finn’s. Except when she heads for an exit, she picks the one heading down.

* * *

When Ben was young and still loved his father with the uncomplicated adoration of childhood, he had flown the Kessel Run.

_The ship drops out of hyperspace for a single breath, banks sharply, jumps again. Ben laughs, and also throws up a little in his mouth as his internal organs fight to the death in his torso._

_“Chewie!” Han yells, face aglow with the dozens of blinking lights and something else that Ben doesn’t understand yet. “Barf bag for the kid!”_

_And his father spares precious seconds to give him a grin and a thumb’s up. Ben barely manages to return the gesture before gravity lays claim to his breakfast._

His stomach turns over now. But he’s not a child, and the Force dragging on him now isn’t gravity. He stands outside Maz’s bar, staring up at the sky through a thousand flapping flags and slowly, cautiously, cracks himself open.

_What do you want so badly in these holocrons that you’d send her to get them?_

The silence eats at him. Because it’s the quiet of _presence_. Ben isn’t alone in his own mind, hasn’t been for a long time (wasn’t even when he was young and still loved his father), and the only way he has been able to deal with that all these years has been by ignoring it. Grimly, doggedly, day after day.

But he knows this feeling. He’s seen it at work before. Some things are worth the risk of--

A smugness that doesn’t belong to him floods through his limbs, zig-zagging through his veins, piercing his heart.

_**Who said this had anything to do with the holocrons?** _

Somewhere near one of the innumerable lakes of Takodana, a rickety lump of a transport has set down. An old man clambers off it, kicks it in the side, yells something to his co-pilot, who roars right back. Ben should do something - should move, should avoid this confrontation, should stop caring altogether.

But when Han Solo enters Maz Kanata’s courtyard, Ben is still standing there, still staring up at the sky. Blue and clear, without a sign of what it’s about to bring down on this world.

Chewie growls a question at him, asking if he’s all right. Ben almost has it in him to answer, but then Han opens his karking mouth, and a savage pleasure rips through him at the old and awkward pain in the man’s voice.

“Now really the time to stop and smell the roses, kid?”

He’s not supposed to feel this. The ugly joy that comes with knowing his father _hurts_ to see him, that he _deserves_ it. He is a bad Jedi, and for one terrible, blinding moment, all he feels about that is smug.

And then the whole damn planet tilts on its axis, a panicked, wordless shout echoing through the Force. Ben blinks, tears his gaze away from the sky, stares open mouthed at his father. His brain works on automatic, shoving at the **voice** , clearing space in his brain for his own mind to inhabit. The shout is new, and nearby.

 _There are always stars, Ben._ And the planets orbiting them. The Ileenium System. The Yavin System. Right here, a ship. The tiniest speck in the Force. Insignificant, and yet, still there. Just like Ben.

“Just get the others,” he rasps. “I don’t have time for this. None of us do.”

And he turns his back on his father, long legs eating up the ground as he heads back into the kriffing bar to figure out just what that damn girl has gotten up to _now_.

* * *

“I got you a present,” Dolari hums into her call. The Stormtrooper flying her shuttle feels vaguely ill behind his mask, but there’s not much she can do about that. He’s about to feel a whole lot worse.

It’s comm only, which is a shame. Dolari rests her elbows on the console , like if she gets close enough to the mic, she’ll be able to...something.

Be closer. She pictures auburn hair and smiles and a lopsided, reluctant smile. Tells herself _soon_ as a soft laugh rings in her ears.

“Is this one alive?”

“Don’t be mean.”

“I’m being concerned.”

“You want to get concerned at me, I’m bringing up your cigarro habit.”

That laugh again. For a moment, Dolari allows herself to pretend it’s enough. That she could swallow that laugh, consume it, and be sated.

But only for a moment.

“It’s nothing like the roses,” she promises. The shuttle shudders, dropping out of hyperspace. “You’ll like it, I swear.”

“All right. I believe you.” A pause. “Dolari.”

The Stormtrooper is going to throw up in his mask. Dolari knows she isn’t physically hungry, but her stomach ties itself in knots anyway. Takodana stares up at her from the viewport. Beyond that, the black, as vast and as empty as she is.

“I’ve got work to do,” she whispers. “I’ll visit soon, Orin. I promise.”

She disconnects. The Stormtrooper whimpers, head lolling on his neck. The acrid scent of sick filters through the stale air from his armour, although the man should at least be credited for managing to land the shuttle.

“You did well,” she tells his still body, and lowers the ramp herself. The Force cries out in agony; she eats the sound and the Force with it, drawing it all into her. The tree, the lakes. The animals. And here and there, a person. Touched with the Force, ripe for the taking.

Dolari Ren steps out onto Takodana. Takodana, in response, begins to die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A SPEEDY UPDATE i might have been possessed. i hope you guys are enjoying the story, and thank you for all your feedback so far! 
> 
> stuff is happening!! we are almost past the Conversations! why did i decide to write this from so many POVs!


	9. Chapter 9

She probably shouldn’t be down here.

But no one stops Rey from heading down the steps, and she can always claim to be lost if it bothers Maz. The cool dark of the basement wraps around her, the noise from the bar overhead fading to a distant buzz.

For a moment, everything is still. Her footsteps echo off the corridor (which seems impossibly long), but the rest of the galaxy could have come to a complete stop for all she knows.

And then she hears the scream.

A child. The sound should feel out of place, but her head is strangely muzzy, like that time she got trapped in a compartment on a Star Destroyer and nearly ran out of oxygen. As if in a daze she stumbles forward, past row upon row of storage doors until she reaches the end.

It opens. The ease of it should feel out of place, but Rey is no longer thinking of place. She could be on Takodana or Jakku or the far reaches of known space as she steps over the threshold, kneels in front of the box that feels like it’s calling out to her, and opens it.

The blue figure is there, where he hadn’t been before. She stares at him, with his hands folded into his robes, infinite kindness written on his weathered features. Her lips part, but she doesn’t know how to ask the question. She’s afraid of the the answer.

“I can’t tell you what will happen if you take it,” he says softly. “Only that it is yours to have, should you decide to.”

The scream sounds again, louder this time. It reverberates in her chest, like it’s trying to claw its way out of her. Rey screws her eyes shut. “I should have stayed on Jakku,” she mutters. “I’m _supposed_ to be on Jakku.”

“Waiting is its own form of running, Rey.”

And then her hand is reaching into the box, her fingers brushing cool metal as the whole damn planet tilts on its axis.

 _A corridor, stretching on into nothingness. Not rough-hewn and ancient, but sharp edges and clinical. A_ snap-hiss _lingers in the air, a hum and thrash chasing it up. The corridor shrinks, stretches, grows, as the cacophony rises around her, and--_

_There’s someone at the end of it._

_A boy._

_She starts to run. The corridor twists on itself, sends her stumbling, but not before she catches sight of the boy’s pale face. His colourless eyes._

_“Are you…” There’s fear in his face. “Are you_ here? _”_

 _She opens her mouth to say_ I don’t know _, and the corridor crumbles in on itself. A desperate_ NO _follows her._

_It spits her out into smoke. A man stands silhouetted against the angry glow of burning trees, hands on the shoulders of another boy. This one is nearly as tall as him._

_“I’m here,” the man soothes. He has a kind voice, no trace of the agony that ruins his face as he looks over the boy’s head at the raging inferno. “You fought well, but you don’t have to anymore. You’re safe.”_

_There are other children, huddling together, comforting each other. She tries to look at their faces, but the fire is roaring closer, threatening to consume her - and only her._

_“It’s not safe,” the boy sobs. “We can't be safe.”_

_The smoke wreathes around her, tangles in her limbs, trips her when she tries to run._

_“It’s energy.” A new voice, cracked, unrecognisable. “It surrounds us...pulls us in…”_

_Pulls the feet from under her. She cries out as the ground rears up and punches her in the face. Rain lashes at her, stinging and ice cold. It should wake her up. She wants to wake up. A figure looms over her, holding out its hand. She grasps it without thinking._

_“I knew you’d make the right decision.” The voice is beatific. This one, she knows._

_“Let go,” she yells, although if it’s at him or herself, she can’t tell. “_ Let go!” _“It will pull you in,” that ancient voice cautions, as the wind whips up heat and sand, and she is five years old again, “to the dark side.” Except she’s still nineteen, watching herself be left behind once more._

 _Another_ snap-hiss _. The vision shatters in a haze of purple, and the last thing she sees before she falls back is a masked face, bearing impassively down on her._

“That,” Ben Solo says, as she lies panting on the cool stone floor of Maz’s castle, “belongs to me.”

Each breath is a knife in her chest. Rey gasps, and gasps again, sucking at air like the storage room is trying to pull it back out of her. Ben looms in the doorway, his whole body held stiff, his face for once unreadable. The mask flashes in her vision again, monstrous in its implacability.

“These are your first steps,” the blue figure says. Rey takes half a second to stare, wild-eyed, at the thing clenched in her grasp.

The lightsaber.

And then she throws it at Ben, scrambling to her feet.

“Then take it! I don't want anything to do with any of this!” The lightsaber bounces off his chest and clatters to the floor as she whirls on the blue figure, the old man as calm as ever in the face of her fear and the anger it’s fueling. “And you! _Leave me alone_.”

She storms towards the door, but Ben is there, blocking the exit. He looms over her, and Rey has never been short but she is aware in this moment of just how much taller he is than her. For all of his demanding the lightsaber from Maz, he leaves it on the floor where it fell, dark eyes boring into her.

Rey braces herself for a fight. She expects loudness, anger, something to lash out against. What she gets is that unsettling, intense quiet.

“Who are you talking to.”

“Get out of my way.”

“Who can you see? _How did you find--_ ”

Rey’s temper, already frayed, snaps complete. She shoves at his chest, and they’re both surprised at how easily he moves. It’s not that she can read it in his face, which has fallen into its usual scowl. It’s a bone deep certainty that lances through her, a tangled mess of emotion that no one person should be able to process.

_\--my lightsaber. The Force is strong within her. Han is here. Han is here. My grandfather’s lightsaber. I hate this place Han is here. Who is this girl how did she find the holocrons is it even about the holocrons Han is here Han is here Dolari is coming--_

“I’m going to be sick,” Rey mutters, and staggers past him. He lets her go, chest heaving like he’s just run a mile, or maybe like he wants to be sick as well. The wall is cool against her fingertips, and then her forehead. She grasps for her thoughts. Only her thoughts. She doesn’t want any part of anyone else’s.

She doesn’t hear him get closer. For such a big man, he’s impossibly silent when he wants to be. And yet - she knows it’s coming. Can feel him reaching for her, the hesitation before his fingers brush her shoulder. Her whole body tenses, prepared for another assault of - of whatever that had been.

Nothing. Rey lets out a breath, slow and shuddering. His touch is like a brand, burning deeper than it has any right to.

“You felt it,” he whispers, and there’s a wonder in his voice that she doesn’t understand.

She twists under his hand, away from it. His dark eyes glitter strangely as he stares at her. His lips are parted, like he wants to speak again but can’t think of the words, can’t think of any words. And the lightsaber, the one that was so important to him, stays lying at his feet.

None of it makes any sense.

“I didn’t feel anything,” she manages.

“Some Jedi,” a voice snorts from somewhere near her waist. “This is a very touching moment, but you are going to have to cut it short. In case you hadn’t noticed, someone is eating the planet.”

Several thoughts slam into Rey’s brain at approximately the same time. One, she’s not a Jedi. Two, Maz is too quiet, and also has the lightsaber. Three, the thing she definitely hadn’t felt had specified that Dolari was coming, and Rey remembers Dolari. Remembers the sight of Ben tearing through a whole kriffing Star Destroyer on his own, only to be brought to his knees by the slight woman’s power.

Ben curses, surprisingly inventive. It takes him more effort than it should to tear his gaze at Rey, to glare down at Maz. “Give that to me.”

“And leave her without a weapon?”

“I don’t want that thing!”

“Uh, guys?” Finn’s voice echoes down the corridor. His head is barely visible from the top of the stairs. “Han Solo and a very scary Wookie are here, and they say we gotta go.”

* * *

Trees, Finn is pretty sure, are not supposed to just collapse like that. The ground isn't supposed to heave like that either, and the urge to run coils tight in Finn’s gut. But Poe is still here, blaster in hand, and Finn’s not about to leave Rey, and where the hell would he run anyway? So he stands in the courtyard and grabs his own blaster and tries very hard not to look at the way the waters are receding in the lake.

He has a very bad feeling about this.

“I keep telling Luke he needs to do something about that girl,” Han Solo - _Han Solo_ \- mutters under his breath. Finn is abruptly very, very aware that he was a Stormtrooper up until a couple of days ago. “BEN! Whatever you’re doing down there that doesn’t involve running, give it up already!”

Ben Solo storms out of the bar in a swirl of black robes. His lightsaber hilt is in his hand, and there’s murder on his stupid face. He jabs a finger at his dad. “I told _you_ to take the others back to the ship.”

Han bats his hand away. “ _One_ , get that thing out of my face. _Two,_ I don’t take orders from you, kid. _Three_ , that’s not even what you--”

“ _Four_ ,” Maz interrupts. “You're both idiots. Hurry up and go already!”

 _Great idea_ , Finn’s gut mutters, but Rey had come up behind Ben looking pale and pissed as hell, and he didn't escape karking Star Destroyer with her to stop caring now. He claps a hand on her shoulder as they move out, and--

A wave of nausea and irritation overcomes him. In the corner of his eye, he sees a flicker of blue that’s almost in the shape of man, and then he's jerking his his hand back. They both stop under the shade of a thousand flags as the forest shrieks in agony, and the well-ordered stomp of Stormtroopers rises in the distance.

Rey stares at him, wide-eyed. Finn stares back. Maz kicks him in the shin, and that’s when he notices the little alien is at the back, holding out what is definitely a lightsaber as the others move on ahead.

“Take it,” she insists, grabbing his hands and pressing the weapon into it. “ _She_ won’t.”

 _She_ glares down at Maz. “I’m not a Jedi!”

“Neither am I,” Finn protests, but he doesn’t drop the lightsaber, doesn’t hand it back. He curls his fingers around it and despite the fact that he’s never preferred melee weapons in his life, it feels…

Right.

“What is this, a picnic?” Han Solo demands. “Maz, what the hell are you doing?”

“Everything okay?”

Finn has a second to take in the fact that Poe, half turned back to them, looks unsteady on his feet. And then the first TIE fighter screams out of the sky, and blows up half of the damn courtyard wall between them. The others disappear in a cloud of debris, but there’s no screams of pain or dismemberment, so Finn decides that they’re totally fine.

“Shit!” On instinct, he reaches out to grab Rey’s hand, just as another wall explodes and chunks of castle rain down around them. It feels sort of like gravity is increasing on him, and he can’t tell if it’s because Rey is trying to take her hand back, or if it’s something more sinister. “ _Shit_. Come on, we’ll go around.”

“Why does going around mean holding hands?” she demands, but they start running together anyway, dodging more debris and blaster bolts as Stormtroopers begin crawling over the terrain like rats. Rey twists her head over her shoulder, and Finn can _feel_ the worry in her throat, taking his in its grasp. “Maz! What are you doing!”

“None of your business!” the little alien crows back, and she’s got a freaking bowcaster the size of her torso that Finn really isn’t sure where she was keeping. “Just mine! Get out of here already!”

Finn looks at Rey. Rey looks right back up at him, her little face set into a mask of determination. A tree uproots itself and sails off into the distance, and the shockwave shudders through the both of them. Finn doesn’t know how he knows that, but it’s probably less weird than flying trees.

She nods at the lightsaber in his hand. “Are you going to use that?”

“I--” Is he? Is she asking for it? He moves to hand it to her, automatically - it must be hers, couldn’t possibly be his - but she shakes her head.

“You use it,” she decides. “Give me your blaster. Leave the trees to Ben, we can handle these thugs.”

He cannot, at any point since he first saw her under the baking hot Jakku sun, remember her using a blaster. But she’s right - they’re not equipped to deal with whatever’s causing the earth to groan under their feet, and she needs a weapon if they’re going to do this. So he shrugs it over his shoulder as they run back to Maz.

There is a moment, as he ducks a blaster bolt and slides his thumb over the lightsaber’s ignition, when he looks out at the encroaching Stormtroopers and wonders how many of them are like him. How many of them are numbers wishing for names, for more than the chance to fight and die in vain for a machine that values them less than the blaster they’re holding.

A blue glow bathes his face and a humming sound burrows into his brain, and Finn hesitates.

Rey aims her blaster, shoots. Nothing happens; she throws herself behind a hunk of rubble before someone with the _safety off_ can blast her back, and he catches the flicker of an eyeroll over her face before she gets the blaster in working order.

 _She might die if you don’t fight_ , a quiet voice in the back of his mind whispers. _Poe might already be dead_.

Finn turns, and charges the nearest trooper. The yell of defiance is probably a bit excessive, but he’s of the opinion that it’s warranted.

“You’re all idiots!” Maz declares, and fires her bowcaster.

* * *

Buddy has never had another master (that it can remember), so Buddy does not have much to base its theories on.

But the human designated ‘Dolari Ren’, so far, has been assigned the subcategory of ‘nice’. She has not been cruel to Buddy, in that its systems are all running at optimum, its panelling has been replaced to fit the rest of its orange-and-white body, and she burst into tears when the human designated ‘Aalto Ren’ (subcategory ‘rude’) grew angry at her for not destroying it.

(Buddy had malfunctioned slightly after that, unable to get all systems working until ‘Dolari’ had assured it that she had no intention of letting it be destroyed, and in fact had just the place to ensure Buddy would not be in danger from anyone else designated ‘Ren’. She had not mentioned whether or not she was included in that designation).

So when the matter of the planet designated ‘Takodana’ begins to drag itself towards ‘Dolari’, Buddy’s systems register surprise. It is not for a droid to make moral judgements, but the ‘Dolari’ that had spoken in such a soft tone to the woman designated ‘Orin’ over the comms seems incompatible, somehow, with what Buddy’s ocular lens is dealing with right now.

Trees. Rocks. The lake, and the myriad of animals within it. Animals from the forest. A person or two, all caught up in her orbit. There is a cacophony of auditory input (grating, crashing, screaming), which Buddy adds to with a low whirr. Designation ‘worried’, if droids had feelings, as all of that mass compacts in on itself, crushing itself smaller and smaller.

“Don’t fret,” ‘Dolari’ says, and it takes Buddy a split second longer to find the appropriate designation. “I still have some control. I won’t eat you.”

Exuberance, it decides, huddling behind her legs as the planet shudders and heaves.

It hopes she doesn’t get the shuttle. They still have to leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dialogue from a certain pale boy in Rey's vision was taken from nymja's The Death of Kylo Ren! Points to anyoen who knows which part c:
> 
> also, i am trying shorter chapters, faster updates. we'll see how it goes!


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